AC/DC · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in BIG BALLS

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-15, 17 and 25-31, and 4 more places -- 37.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
67
LENGTH
2:33
DIFFICULTY
24/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 105 BPM
BIG BALLS · BAR 10

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 3 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 24 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 79 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 79, 92 and 105 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 BIG BALLS use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 105 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 37.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 9-15, 17, 25-31 and 33, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in BIG BALLS hard?

3 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 24 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 67 BARS ANALYSED