'Most difficult drum beat ever recorded'

anp27

Senior Member
So I played a gig last night in NYC (Lower East Side to be specific) and hung out for a bit after the show. The guys in the band and myself sat talking with some of the audience members about music, etc... Out of nowhere, one guy talks about a song he had heard on the radio recently by Morris Day & The Time and claims that the song features 'the most difficult drum beat ever recorded', and the song he's talking about is '777-9311'. I had heard about this song before, probably from a Modern Drummer magazine article I had read a few years ago. But I never actually learned the song before, so I took stab at it this morning, transcribing the song first and then learning to actually play the song on the drums. Being that I had transcribed it neatly within Sibelius, I decided to share my transcription of it here on the Forum. You might notice that I have separated the hi hat part from the kick/snare part so that it will be easier to see whats going on within the beat. Hope you guys have a good time tackling this killer drum groove!
 

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This might be just me, but splitting the groove like that makes it harder for me to understand what is going on.

Wowza! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LyGRkFyN-Bk

I used to feel this way too at first but I personally find it easier to digest a complicated drum groove such as this one. The hi hat part is really the hardest part of the beat, therefore learning each component limb by limb may actually help.. the way I'm doing it is from the bottom up. First, try playing the kick and snare part and get that grooving', then add in the hi hat part. If you are practicing to a click, you should have no problem locking in the notes in where they should land within the beat. It would definitely help to set have your metronome clicking out 16th note subdivisions.. it will be easier locking in this way.
 
I practice it one limb at a time, it is just how you wrote it. I have to work extra hard to read that notation because the notes are separated and not on the same clef. Having all the limbs on the same clef makes it easier for me to see how each limb works with each other.

I'm working on the groove now.
 
This is a very neat part and grooves; but the toughest drum beat ever? Was this guy on drugs? I can point you to a hundred different pieces by a hundred different drummers that are a lot more intricate in concept and execution.


Fox.
 
It's a really cool part, but it sounds like a drum machine to me.
 
This is a very neat part and grooves; but the toughest drum beat ever? Was this guy on drugs? I can point you to a hundred different pieces by a hundred different drummers that are a lot more intricate in concept and execution.


Fox.

Try playing it, properly, and then reconsider. Getting the dynamic balance of all those subdivision to get it sounding proper is very challenging.

This guy - http://www.myspace.com/bennosattler - has a written a more conventional transcription, under photos.
 
It's a really cool part, but it sounds like a drum machine to me.

I agree. Either that or one of those things (forgot what they're called) that makes everything more tight and even.
 
Ain't nothin but a thang...played that when it came out..What else ya got?

Just Kidding...kinda. The hardest part for me about this song was trusting my ears that what I thought I was hearing was what was actually going on. The next trick is how you choose to interpret that,being originally done on either e-drums or a drum machine. Once you learn to trust your ears, alot of the seemingly hard parts get easier...provided you can execute what it is you think you're hearing.
 
Ain't nothin but a thang...played that when it came out..What else ya got?

Just Kidding...kinda. The hardest part for me about this song was trusting my ears that what I thought I was hearing was what was actually going on. The next trick is how you choose to interpret that,being originally done on either e-drums or a drum machine. Once you learn to trust your ears, alot of the seemingly hard parts get easier...provided you can execute what it is you think you're hearing.

Hahahahaha I was 1 years old when this song came out!
 
So I played a gig last night in NYC (Lower East Side to be specific) and hung out for a bit after the show. The guys in the band and myself sat talking with some of the audience members about music, etc... Out of nowhere, one guy talks about a song he had heard on the radio recently by Morris Day & The Time and claims that the song features 'the most difficult drum beat ever recorded', and the song he's talking about is '777-9311'. I had heard about this song before, probably from a Modern Drummer magazine article I had read a few years ago. But I never actually learned the song before, so I took stab at it this morning, transcribing the song first and then learning the actually play the song on the drums. Being that I had transcribed it neatly within Sibelius, I decided to share my transcription of it here on the Forum. You might notice that I have separated the hi hat part from the kick/snare part so that it will be easier to see whats going on within the beat. Hope you guys have a good time tackling this killer drum groove!

Nasty groove! Thanks for sharing!

I think there's an error in your transcription. The first snare drum note should be an 8th note, not a quarter note, so that the bass drum note following the snare occurs an 8th note earlier, on the "and" of beat 2, instead of on beat 3. The next bass drum note should stay where it is presently, on the "e" of beat 3.
 
Nasty groove! Thanks for sharing!

I think there's an error in your transcription. The first snare drum note should be an 8th note, not a quarter note, so that the bass drum note following the snare occurs an 8th note earlier, on the "and" of beat 2, instead of on beat 3. The next bass drum note should stay where it is presently, on the "e" of beat 3.

Thanks for pointing this out! I have made the correction (I left out the bass drum on the 'and' of 2) and reattached the PDF to the original post.

On first listen, you can't hear the unaccented bass drum hit on beat 3, but if you slow it down you can actually hear it played very softly before the accented hit on the 'e' of 3.
 
Thanks for pointing this out! I have made the correction (I left out the bass drum on the 'and' of 2) and reattached the PDF to the original post.

On first listen, you can't hear the unaccented bass drum hit on beat 3, but if you slow it down you can actually hear it played very softly before the accented hit on the 'e' of 3.

Ah, right! I can hear the "ghosted" bass drum note pretty clearly right at the beginning of the track now. You could place parentheses around that bass drum note, to show the dynamics.
 
Ain't nothin but a thang...played that when it came out..What else ya got?

Just Kidding...kinda. The hardest part for me about this song was trusting my ears that what I thought I was hearing was what was actually going on. The next trick is how you choose to interpret that,being originally done on either e-drums or a drum machine. Once you learn to trust your ears, alot of the seemingly hard parts get easier...provided you can execute what it is you think you're hearing.

+1

I played this with a band last night. It was tricky because of the offset snare drum on the "e" of 4 in both bars. It was difficult to get everyone else in the band to realize that it isn't simply 2&4 and that the handclaps(?) on 2&4 on the recording were probably there to anchor the ear to a backbeat.

Zoro used to play this groove in his drum clinics.

Mike

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