BILLY JOEL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Only The Good Die Young

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-15, 18-23 and 28, and 22 more places -- 57.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
129
LENGTH
3:18
DIFFICULTY
45/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 156 BPM
ONLY THE GOOD DIE YOUNG · BAR 11

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 36 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 45 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 117 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, hi-hat 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 117, 137 and 156 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 Only The Good Die Young use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 156 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 57.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-15, 18-23, 28 and 30, and 21 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Only The Good Die Young hard?

36 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 45 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 · 129 BARS ANALYSED