BRITISH SEA POWER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Whirling-in-rags 8am

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-2, 11-73 and 75, and 1 more place -- 91.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
113 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
119
LENGTH
4:13
DIFFICULTY
28/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 113 BPM
WHIRLING-IN-RAGS 8AM · BAR 1

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 13 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 28 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 85 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 85, 99 and 113 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 Whirling-in-rags 8am use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 113 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 91.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-2, 11-73, 75 and 77-119. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Whirling-in-rags 8am hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 28 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 119 BARS ANALYSED