DEVOTCHKA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Winner Is

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 41-56 and 58-77 -- 59% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
77
LENGTH
2:56
DIFFICULTY
55/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 105 BPM
WINNER IS · BAR 41

It is played on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 59 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 55 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 68 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, and nothing else. 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 68, 81, 93 and 105 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 Winner Is use?

A one-bar groove on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 105 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 59% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 41-56 and 58-77. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Winner Is hard?

59 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 55 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 · 77 BARS ANALYSED