AVRIL LAVIGNE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Keep Holding On

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 33-39, 41-47 and 49-55, and 15 more places -- 66.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
162 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
207
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
27/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 162 BPM
KEEP HOLDING ON · BAR 34

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 3 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 27 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 122 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 122, 142 and 162 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 Keep Holding On use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and snare, in 3/4 at 162 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 66.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 33-39, 41-47, 49-55 and 57-62, and 14 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Keep Holding On hard?

3 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 27 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 · 207 BARS ANALYSED