Soul Man – Sam And Dave (Analysis)

Music Lesson: Sam and Dave's "Soul Man"

Here we're looking at the Sam and Dave classic "Soul Man." This piece is divided into several specific parts.

Intro Pattern

We're going to kick things off with the intro pattern where we play quarter notes on the bell of the ride cymbal.

• This has its challenges, as we need to get that exactly right, hopefully using the shoulder of the stick for a slightly thicker sound on the bell.
• Along with the quarter note on the bell, the bass drum plays beats two and four.

Here's that pattern:

(Play pattern)

At the end of the four-bar intro, we hit the snare drum on beat three. We then have a one-beat gap before moving into the verse pattern.

Verse Pattern

In the verse pattern, we play:

• Eighth notes on the hi-hat.
• The bass drum plays beats one, three, and the and of beat three.
• The bass drum now plays on two and four.

We aim to maintain an even driving quality to the eighth notes on the hi-hat. Notice there's a crash on beat one.

This pattern continues through the four-bar intro and the eight-bar verse. Importantly, there's no crash on the downbeat of the eight-bar verse.

So essentially, you're playing that pattern for 12 bars, at the end of which, during the 12th bar, there's a change to the pattern where we hit the and of beat four. This then transitions into the eight-bar chorus pattern.

Let's play the last two bars of the verse so you can hear that change.

Chorus Pattern

Now we've reached the chorus, which features a slightly different bass drum pattern compared to the verse:

• Essentially, we're playing all of the eighth notes on the bass drum, except for those played by the snare drum on two and four.

Isolated, the bass drum and snare drum pattern is this:

(Play bass drum and snare pattern)

Now, we'll combine that with our eighth notes on the hi-hat. We also hit a crash cymbal at the beginning of this eight-bar section.

At the end of the eight-bar chorus, there's a simple fill that leads us into the bridge:

• We basically stop the hi-hats on beat three and then play eighth notes on the snare to transition out of this section, something like this:

(Play fill)

Since it's just eighth notes that we're already playing on the hi-hat, I'd choose to play that using the same hand that's playing the hi-hat for continuity.

Here are the last two bars of the chorus:

(Play final bars of the chorus)

Bridge Section

At this point, we head over to the ride cymbal where we're continuing the eighth notes with a different bass drum pattern:

• We play beat one, the end of beat one, beat three, and the end of beat three on the bass drum.
• Notice I'm playing the body of the ride cymbal rather than the bell, as we did during the intro.

Another point to watch in this section is that it's five beats long, and we end with the snare landing on beat four of the fifth bar.

Let's play the last two bars of that:

(Play last two bars of bridge)

Outro

This brings us to the outro, which is the same as the intro:

• We return to the quarter notes on the bell of the ride cymbal, and the bass drum plays beats two and four.
• Once again, we have one of those eighth-note fills, which you could play using single strokes, but I'll play it using the same hand.

Here are the last four bars of the piece:

(Play last four bars)

So those are all the parts you'll need to play the piece. Have fun playing along!