Description
Notes From John
BPM = 178. Hi-hats very loose. Open hats are marked. Crash on bar 2 of every 2-bar phrase — covers miss that.
For the player
Tommy Ramone on the 1976 Ramones cut — punk sprint, no warm-up lap. Sit in the pocket under that buzzsaw guitar; don’t invent a second backbeat. Snare is on every quarter — lock that four-on-the-floor snare and leave it alone. Hi-hats very loose are written from the top; leave them sloshy, don’t iron them into a click. Open hats are marked; bark the opens where John wrote the circle. Accents stay as written. The craft cover bands skip: crash on bar 2 of every 2-bar phrase — put it there, not on 1. Chorus flips to ride or crash at 0:55 and 1:27 — pick one and stay with it. Interlude hits at 0:22 (“Hey ho, let’s…”); Verse 1 at 0:33; Verse 2 at 1:06; Verse 3 at 1:38. Outro at 2:00 is the eighth-note snare/tom drive back into the hey-ho — relocate the hands and ride it out to the last accents. Listen first; the pocket at BPM = 178 is the job, not the count-in.
Drum Sheet Music for “Blitzkrieg Bop” by Ramones
