U2 · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Every Breaking Wave

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-42, 64-79 and 92-111 -- 50% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
117 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
30/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 117 BPM
EVERY BREAKING WAVE · BAR 28

It is played on ride and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 30 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 88 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, ride 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 88, 102 and 117 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 Every Breaking Wave use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 117 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 50% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-42, 64-79 and 92-111. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Every Breaking Wave hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 112 BARS ANALYSED