GREEN DAY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 156-178, 196-229 and 248-253 -- 21.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
147 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
322
LENGTH
8:45
DIFFICULTY
55/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 147 BPM
HOLIDAY / BOULEVARD OF BROKEN DREAMS · BAR 157

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 55 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 110 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 110, 129 and 147 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 Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 147 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 156-178, 196-229 and 248-253. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 22 times over the song.

Is the beat in Holiday / Boulevard of Broken Dreams hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 55 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 · 322 BARS ANALYSED