METALLICA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Nothing Else Matters

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-19, 23-28 and 32, and 8 more places -- 32% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
71 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
4:48
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 71 BPM
NOTHING ELSE MATTERS · BAR 15

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the ghost notes and accents under the accents.

The whole song is 41 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 53 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 53, 62 and 71 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 Nothing Else Matters use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 71 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 32% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-19, 23-28, 32 and 34, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Nothing Else Matters hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 112 BARS ANALYSED