DRUM SONGS

Rock drum songs

Thousands of charts, 15 to 350 BPM, averaging 128. Each one is read from a real score: play it along to the record, take it down to any tempo, or work through the course underneath it.

MOST PLAYED

TEMPO
15-350 BPM
AVERAGE
128 BPM
MOSTLY
INTERMEDIATE

MOST PLAYED FIRST

The whole shelf, where you can narrow it further or sort it easiest first.

ABOUT ROCK DRUM SONGS

The biggest shelf here, and the one most people learn on. Rock drumming is a backbeat on two and four, something keeping time in between, and a fill at the end of every eight bars -- and then fifty years of records arguing about the details. Classic rock, hard rock, southern rock, garage and the rest are all filed here.

Beginner, intermediate and advanced parts are all here on the source catalogue's own difficulty tiers, with intermediate the largest of them. Most of the shelf has not been through that ranking at all, which is true of two thirds of this catalogue and is why the difficulty filter is something you turn on rather than something applied for you. Hundreds of hours of playing at the tempos written, all told.

A good place to start is "Dream Brother" at 15 BPM, the slowest of the rock songs on this shelf, or "29 Palms" at 10 bars, the shortest. Every chart here downloads as sheet music, tab, MIDI and MusicXML if you would rather read it away from the screen.

QUESTIONS

What is the classic rock drum beat?

Kick on one and three, snare on two and four, eighth notes on the hi-hat over the top. Learn that one bar and you can play along with a startling number of records; almost everything else in rock is a variation on where the kick goes. Most of the songs on this shelf open with exactly it.

Which rock song should I learn first?

One whose groove you can already hum. Knowing where the song goes next is most of what holds a part together, and a record you have heard a hundred times has already taught you that. Sort this shelf by easiest first and pick the one you recognise.

How fast are rock drum songs?

From 15 to 350 BPM, averaging 128. That number is where the record sits, not where you have to play it: every chart here runs at any tempo from a quarter of the written one upwards, with the recording following where it can.

What is the slowest and the fastest of them?

"Dream Brother" by Jeff Buckley at 15 BPM is the slowest, and "…And Justice for All My Loving" by Beatallica at 350 BPM is the quickest. Neither number is a wall: every chart here plays at any tempo from a quarter of the written one upwards, so the fast ones are learnable at the speed of the slow ones.

Which one is quickest to learn?

"29 Palms" by Robert Plant is the shortest part on this shelf at 10 bars. Short is not the same as easy, but a short part is one you can get all the way through in a sitting, and playing something end to end teaches more than looping the first eight bars of something longer.

BY GENRE

Metal drum songsPunk drum songsJazz and blues drum songsFunk and soul drum songsPop drum songsEasy rock drum songsHard metal drum songs