QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Gonna Leave You

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-33, 51-57 and 59-65, and 2 more places -- 35.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
143 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
99
LENGTH
2:47
DIFFICULTY
45/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 143 BPM
GONNA LEAVE YOU · BAR 27

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 45 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 107 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 107, 125 and 143 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 Gonna Leave You use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 143 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-33, 51-57, 59-65 and 83-89, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Gonna Leave You hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 45 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 99 BARS ANALYSED