HOT FOR TEACHER Drums tab video
Van Halen
Make your own HOT FOR TEACHER tab video, freeNo editing. No card. 10 minutes free.- Instrument
- Drums
- Difficulty
- Hard
- Tuning
- —
- Tempo
- 220 BPM
About this riff
This part is built around a fast double-bass half-time shuffle, with the hands playing a swung snare/hi-hat groove while both feet fill in the underlying triplets. The famous trick is that the ride only strikes the first two partials of each triplet ('1' and '3'), so the feet complete the third partial and the ear is fooled into hearing continuous triplets. It demands solid four-way independence, a relaxed shuffle feel at speed, and stamina to hold the double-kick steady across the barline hertas in the intro.
Did you know?
Alex Van Halen played the intro using two separate bass drums rather than a modern double-kick pedal, which is a big reason the pattern sounds so relentless and why 1984-era drummers resorted to bolting two kits together to copy it. The shuffle itself is widely traced to Billy Cobham's 'Quadrant 4' (1973) and Simon Phillips' work on Jeff Beck's 'Space Boogie' (1980). Producer Ted Templeman, engineer Donn Landee and the band have always maintained the performance was played for real, without speeding up or sample replacement, despite decades of listeners assuming it was too machine-like to be human.
FAQ
Is this the real audio?
The audio is rendered from a high-quality SoundFont (FluidR3), so it plays for real. It is not the original master recording.
Can I make my own HOT FOR TEACHER tab video?
Yes. Upload your file to Tab2Vid and export a 9:16 or 16:9 video with real audio in about a minute. The free plan needs no credit card.