VAN HALEN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Summer Nights

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-30, 32-35 and 37-74, and 2 more places -- 94.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
92 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
88
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
18/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 92 BPM
SUMMER NIGHTS · BAR 14

It is played on snare and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 4 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 18 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 69 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, and nothing else. 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 69, 81 and 92 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 Summer Nights use?

A one-bar groove on snare and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 92 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 94.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-30, 32-35, 37-74 and 76-79, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Summer Nights hard?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 88 BARS ANALYSED