PRECZ Z CENZURĄ · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in When The Levee Breaks (Led Zepplin)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-20, 26-39 and 56-69, and 2 more places -- 69% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
69 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
130
LENGTH
7:31
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 69 BPM
WHEN THE LEVEE BREAKS (LED ZEPPLIN) · BAR 3

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 52 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 52 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, hi-hat 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 52, 60 and 69 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 When The Levee Breaks (Led Zepplin) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 69 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 69% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-20, 26-39, 56-69 and 75-88, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in When The Levee Breaks (Led Zepplin) hard?

30 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 52 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 · 130 BARS ANALYSED