FOO FIGHTERS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Let It Die

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-24 -- 22.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
124 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
97
LENGTH
3:08
DIFFICULTY
51/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 124 BPM
LET IT DIE · BAR 5

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 51 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 93 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 93, 109 and 124 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 Let It Die use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and snare, in 4/4 at 124 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-24. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Let It Die hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 51 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 · 97 BARS ANALYSED