HADDAWAY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in What Is Love

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-85 and 90-145 -- 94.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
126 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
145
LENGTH
4:36
DIFFICULTY
63/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 126 BPM
WHAT IS LOVE · BAR 14

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 57 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 63 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 82 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 82, 97, 111 and 126 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 What Is Love use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 126 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 94.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-85 and 90-145. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in What Is Love hard?

57 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 63 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the speed of the hand keeping time.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 145 BARS ANALYSED