ŞEBNEM · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in utangaç

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-8, 10 and 12, and 16 more places -- 19.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
72 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
138
LENGTH
5:05
DIFFICULTY
58/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 72 BPM
UTANGAÇ · BAR 7

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 42 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 58 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 54 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 54, 63 and 72 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does utangaç use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 72 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-8, 10, 12 and 18, and 15 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in utangaç hard?

42 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 58 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 138 BARS ANALYSED