LADY GAGA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Judas (Rock cover)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 46-50, 66-90 and 121-130 -- 34.5% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
134
LENGTH
4:07
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
JUDAS (ROCK COVER) · BAR 46

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 69 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 53 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 85 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 85, 100, 115 and 130 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 Judas (Rock cover) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 130 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 34.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 46-50, 66-90 and 121-130. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Judas (Rock cover) hard?

69 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 53 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 · 134 BARS ANALYSED