BON JOVI · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Let It Rock

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 1-3, 5-7 and 19, and 15 more places -- 54.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
100 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 100 BPM
LET IT ROCK · BARS 1-2

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 38 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 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 75 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 75, 88 and 100 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 Rock use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 100 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 54.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-3, 5-7, 19 and 21, and 14 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Let It Rock hard?

38 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 · 81 BARS ANALYSED