Chords for My Drummer Said That RINGO Sucks, So I Dared Him To Play THIS Beatles Beat!

Hey everybody, it's Mike here from The Art of Guitar.
I am back behind the drum kit, obviously.
I'm kind of on another Beatles kick.
It's because last week I did a video on the Beatles' heaviest moments and in doing so, in doing the research for it,
I went back and listened to all their songs and it really got me back into the Beatles mode once again.
And it reminded me of this funny thing that happened a long time ago.
This is decades ago now, but we were trying on a drummer one time and we were talking about our influences
and somebody brought up Ringo Starr in the Beatles.
And he kind of rolled his eyes, he kind of scoffed at that, and I was like, what?
He's like, oh Ringo's so overrated, that guy plays such simple beats, you know?
And so I thought since I didn't really know the guy, I would kind of test him out a little bit and see if he has a sense of humor.
And I was like, okay, tell you what, I have a challenge for you.
I have a dare of sorts.
If you could play an entire Beatles song, a particular one that I was going to choose,
all the way through, without stopping, without slowing down, without making a mistake,
then in my mind I would think that you have the right to call him overrated.
And he was like, yeah, but I don't really know any Beatles songs, so that's not fair.
And I was like, that's okay, because this particular song has one beat through the entire song.
And it's two and a half minutes long.
Like I said, it's one beat.
Can you do it?
And he's like, sure.
What's the beat?
I had two songs in mind.
The first one I thought of was What Goes On, which is off of Rubber Soul.
And it's got a really fast [E] shuffle beat. _ _
What Goes On.
And it has kind of a more complicated kick drum pattern than the song I ended up choosing,
which is actually [D] Act Naturally.
_ _ _ [N] And if you listen to both songs, they have a similar shuffle groove through the whole thing.
And to me, it's always been amazing that Ringo can play that beat for so long,
in this case two and a half minutes, and not slow down, not waver at all,
because it's actually pretty difficult to do.
The shuffle on the hi-hat is just like this. _
[Gb] And so if you add the snare to that, you get_
[A] And the kick drum is just on the one and three beats.
When [N] _ I showed him that beat, he looked a little bit nervous, I could tell,
because he was a rock drummer, and he really didn't have a lot of shuffle beats in his repertoire,
from what I could tell by his expression.
A lot of drummers are really great at a lot of beats, but when it comes to shuffles or swings,
sometimes that could be their Achilles heel.
And the one thing I know about Ringo is he has like a snappiness to his shuffles.
And if you watch him do it live, actually, he looks really relaxed as he's playing this
for [Gb] over two and a half minutes, and he's singing at the same time.
So when I explained all this to this drummer guy, he looked a little bit nervous now,
because he knew he had to step up, and he had to do this,
in order to have the right, in my mind at least, to say that Ringo Starr is overrated.
He sounded like this.
_ _ _ [A] _
_ _ [Ab] Like he was trying to find his groove, I could tell, because it was such a foreign beat to him.
But after a while, he started grooving on a little bit.
[A] _ _ He started slowing down slightly, because you could tell he was starting to get fatigued
after only about 30 seconds.
_ _ _ He's like, no, you gotta keep it up, man. _
_ _ _ He was wavering [E] all over the place.
He started to sweat.
I started to kind of feel bad for him.
I really set him up, because I knew that this was a tough beat for some drummers.
And I actually had a plan B.
I thought, okay, if he's able to do this, if he could play Act Naturally all the way through
and keep a solid groove for two and a half minutes,
then I was going to throw What Goes On at him,
because that has a different kick drum pattern like I was talking about.
It's a little more tricky to keep going.
So I'll do it slow first.
[Gbm] _ There's _ _ _ _ _ just a lot more to it, and having to do that for two whole minutes,
two and a half minutes, could be really insane.
_ _ _ _ [G]
So after about three or four attempts, each one lasting about 30 seconds to a minute tops,
he finally just sort of dropped his sticks, laughed.
We laughed about it.
And he admitted that he never even tried to play any Ringo beats before.
But yet he had this opinion.
It's one of those things where something can get into the zeitgeist,
whether it's Ringo Starr sucks or Lars Ulrich sucks or whatever,
and sometimes people don't question it, and they just believe it for no reason.
And even though Ringo having a couple beats that are really hard to sustain,
it doesn't make him the best drummer ever,
but I just wanted this drummer guy to realize
that there's a lot more to Ringo's playing than he probably realized.
So I'm not one to offer a challenge and not be able to try it myself.
Of course, back in the day I practiced it,
but it's been a long time since I tried this whole song all the way through at two and a half minutes.
So what I'm going to do is I'm going to do it now, but I'm going to speed up the time.
So if you want to see me play in real time, just slow down the speed meter or whatever in YouTube.
Just slow it down if you want to see the whole thing in real time.
See how far I get.
Here we go. _
_ [D] _ [Am] _ [D] _ [Gm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Am] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
_ [Gb] _ [Bb] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Bb] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ Here we _ _ go. _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [Gm] _
[A] _ _ [Bb] _ _ _ [Gm] _ _ _
_ _ [Bb] _ _ [Gm] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Bb] _ _ [Gm] _ _
_ _ [G] Ouch.
That felt almost as hard as doing downstrokes in Master of Puppets on the guitar all the way through.
If you don't have a solid shuffle hand going,
you're not going to be able to make it too far without a lot of discomfort.
And I do have a decent shuffle.
I've been playing shuffles for a long time.
I started taking drum lessons just so I could learn the Rosanna shuffle.
[Bb] _ _ [Gm] _ [Bb] But because I haven't been playing shuffles too much lately,
I kind of lost that muscle memory of it.
It's really weird and I really did struggle towards the end of that.
So if you ever run into a drummer who has harsh words or harsh opinions about Ringo Starr,
maybe offer them the same challenge.
First start with the Act Naturally challenge.
And if they're able to do that pretty easily, then go to the What Goes On challenge.
And I'm sure they're going to at least respect Ringo a little bit more than they used to. _ _