GUNS N' ROSES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Sweet Child O' Mine

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 74, 102 and 114-127, and 7 more places -- 18.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
182
LENGTH
5:55
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
SWEET CHILD O' MINE · BAR 74

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 45 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 60 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 92 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, ride 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 92, 108 and 123 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 Sweet Child O' Mine use?

A one-bar groove on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 74, 102, 114-127 and 130-132, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Sweet Child O' Mine hard?

45 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 182 BARS ANALYSED