GOO GOO DOLLS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Long Way Down

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-12, 14 and 16, and 35 more places -- 69.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
176 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
139
LENGTH
3:10
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 176 BPM
LONG WAY DOWN · BAR 2

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 44 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 57 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 132 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, ride 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 132, 154 and 176 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 Long Way Down use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 176 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 69.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-12, 14, 16 and 18, and 34 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Long Way Down hard?

44 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 57 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 · 139 BARS ANALYSED