How To Play Hysteria by Muse on Drums

Dominic Howard always comes up with the goods and the grooves he developed for Hysteria are the perfect example of this. For a three piece they make a massive noise so make sure you pull your weight when you play this song.

Intro
A distorted bass line sets up the track and on bar five Dominic enters with a bombastic groove: eighth-notes peddled on the hi-hats, a bass drum, hi-tom and lo-tom on beat one then flammed backbeats on two and four.

After four bars Dom lays into a heavy four-on-the-floor groove with eighth-notes played on the ride cymbal. The left hand (Dom’s right) plays all the off beats on an open hi-hat as well as the backbeats on two and four.

Verse
The verse groove features off beat open hi-hats again, backbeats on two and four and a tricky 16th-note bass drum pattern. The big challenge here is co-ordinating the four limbs to make the groove sound and feel the way it should. This may require a bit of practice.

Chorus
On the chorus Dom plays eighth-notes on the ride cymbal, backbeats on two and four and a cool hi-hat punctuation on the a of two. The bass drum plays a relatively busy sixteenth-note pattern that fills in a lot of the gaps.

The chorus groove could pose a bit of a challenge but the big sixteenth-note fill at the end of each verse may be the trickiest part of the tune. It is made up of two groups of six and a group of four so if you can perfect the individual groups first you should be able to put it all together.

Now Kill It! DN