MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-31, 57-58 and 93-97, and 6 more places -- 15.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
166 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
133
LENGTH
3:12
DIFFICULTY
73/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 166 BPM
NA NA NA (NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA) · BAR 25

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 73 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 125 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 125, 145 and 166 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 Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) use?

A one-bar groove on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 166 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 25-31, 57-58, 93-97 and 103, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Na Na Na (Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na Na) hard?

33 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 73 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 133 BARS ANALYSED