NEIL YOUNG · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Heart of Gold DW

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-3, 5-12 and 19-25, and 3 more places -- 75% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
82 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
64
LENGTH
3:07
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 82 BPM
HEART OF GOLD DW · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 25 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 42 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 62 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 62, 72 and 82 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 Heart of Gold DW use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 82 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 75% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-3, 5-12, 19-25 and 27-34, and 2 more places.

Is the beat in Heart of Gold DW hard?

25 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 42 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 · 64 BARS ANALYSED