NIRVANA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Endless, Nameless (Live At Paramount Theatre)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 58-66, 80-83 and 85, and 4 more places -- 21.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
150 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
159
LENGTH
4:14
DIFFICULTY
50/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 150 BPM
ENDLESS, NAMELESS (LIVE AT PARAMOUNT THEATRE) · BAR 58

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 36 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 50 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 113 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 113, 131 and 150 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 Endless, Nameless (Live At Paramount Theatre) use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 150 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 58-66, 80-83, 85 and 88-90, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Endless, Nameless (Live At Paramount Theatre) hard?

36 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 50 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 159 BARS ANALYSED