MICHAEL JACKSON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-73, 77-108 and 110-157, and 1 more place -- 89.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
122 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
6:04
DIFFICULTY
33/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 122 BPM
WANNA BE STARTIN' SOMETHIN' · BAR 2

It is played on the crash, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 16 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 33 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 92 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.

Tempo goes 92, 107 and 122 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 Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' use?

A one-bar groove on crash, in 4/4 at 122 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 89.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-73, 77-108, 110-157 and 174-185. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' hard?

16 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how much of it falls off the beat the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 185 BARS ANALYSED