BON JOVI · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Open All Night

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-58 -- 37.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
60 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
63
LENGTH
4:12
DIFFICULTY
23/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 60 BPM
OPEN ALL NIGHT · BAR 37

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 18 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 23 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 45 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 45, 53 and 60 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 Open All Night use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 60 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 37.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 37-58. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Open All Night hard?

18 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 23 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 63 BARS ANALYSED