BUTTHOLE SURFERS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Who Was in My Room Last Night?

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 28-46, 60-70 and 74-75, and 4 more places -- 62% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
40 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
146
LENGTH
14:30
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 40 BPM
WHO WAS IN MY ROOM LAST NIGHT? · BAR 29

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 26 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 44 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

There is not much to reduce here -- the room opens it near enough as written, at 40 BPM, and asks for it clean before it moves.

  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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  4. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Two tempos only, 40 BPM, and the gate at each is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Who Was in My Room Last Night? use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 40 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 62% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 28-46, 60-70, 74-75 and 78, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 25 times over the song.

Is the beat in Who Was in My Room Last Night? hard?

26 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 44 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 · 146 BARS ANALYSED