Lesson 9: Your first song, When the Levee Breaks

Eight lessons of pieces. Now a whole song. When the Levee Breaks is 71 BPM, has a beat you already have the parts for, and does not change for seven minutes. It is also, by most counts, the most sampled drum beat ever recorded, so you will hear it in a hundred other places once you know it.

Watch first

The beat

Eighth notes on the hi-hat. Snare on two and four. Kick on one, the “and” of one, the “and” of two and the “and” of three. On the page it looks busier than it is; it is the money beat with the kick moved to the “ands” after beat one.

▶ Play71 BPM−5+5

Why it sounds like that

John Bonham recorded it at the bottom of a stairwell at Headley Grange with two microphones hanging from the floor above, which is where the size comes from. But the size is not the lesson; the placement is. Bonham plays the whole thing a fraction behind the click, relaxed, as if he has all the time in the world. At 71 BPM you have all the time in the world too. Do not rush the “ands”. Let each kick sit at the back of its slot.

The tempo page calls the part intermediate, and the feel is. The notes are not: after lesson five you have every one of them.

Playing along

1. The metronome at 71, beat alone, until it is boring. Two minutes.
2. The beat with sixteenth subdivision on, so you can hear how late “behind” is allowed to be. It is later than you think.
3. The record. Put the song on. The drums start on their own, so you can hear the beat before you join it. Play the beat under the whole song; there are almost no fills, and the ones there are you can leave out.
4. Then the lab. The classic-groove page has the beat written out and a ½ speed button. At half speed it feels like a different song, which is useful: it is where you find out whether your kicks are really on the “ands” or just near them.

What a song teaches that an exercise cannot

An exercise ends when you decide. A song ends when it ends, and it is seven minutes long. Keeping one beat steady and interesting for that long, without speeding up, without getting bored into a mistake, is the actual job. Every drummer in every band is doing that job right now.

Practise

The metronome at 71, then the song, twice through. Log the session with the song’s name and the tempo. Lesson ten is about what to do with a log once you have one, and where to go for the next song.