BON JOVI · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Livin' On A Prayer

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-44, 71-78 and 81-82, and 4 more places -- 36.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
108
LENGTH
3:31
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
LIVIN' ON A PRAYER · BAR 37

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 42 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 92 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, and nothing else. 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 92, 108 and 123 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 Livin' On A Prayer use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 36.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 37-44, 71-78, 81-82 and 84-86, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Livin' On A Prayer hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 42 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 · 108 BARS ANALYSED