AC/DC · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Hells Bells

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 22, 25 and 27-33, and 8 more places -- 23.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
124
LENGTH
4:36
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 108 BPM
HELLS BELLS · BAR 22

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 27 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 44 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 81 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 81, 95 and 108 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 Hells Bells use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 108 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 22, 25, 27-33 and 35, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Hells Bells hard?

27 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 44 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 · 124 BARS ANALYSED