KID ROCK · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in American Bad Ass

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 11-12, 14-16 and 18-20, and 9 more places -- 35.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
92 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
145
LENGTH
6:18
DIFFICULTY
40/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 92 BPM
AMERICAN BAD ASS · BAR 11

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 40 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 69 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 69, 81 and 92 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 American Bad Ass use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 92 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 11-12, 14-16, 18-20 and 26-29, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in American Bad Ass hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 145 BARS ANALYSED