AUDIOSLAVE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Seven Nation Army

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-24, 33-34 and 43-45, and 5 more places -- 37.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
125 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
132
LENGTH
4:13
DIFFICULTY
33/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 125 BPM
SEVEN NATION ARMY · BAR 1

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 33 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 94 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.

Tempo goes 94, 109 and 125 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 Seven Nation Army use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 125 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 37.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-24, 33-34, 43-45 and 49-60, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Seven Nation Army hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 132 BARS ANALYSED