How to play the drum track for Don’t Stop Believing (Part 1)

“Don’t Stop Believing” is a song that was recorded by Journey for their Escape album released in 1981. The drummer was Steve Smith.

I was having a conversation with a drummer-friend of mine who said that when it comes to playing this track, he cheats with the part. In my opinion, this drum part needs to be played properly in order to do it justice.

The drum part is played in an open position, meaning that, in the case of a right-handed setup, the left hand will play the constant driving eighth notes while the right hand is free to play the “melody” of the part.

This will probably mean that your non-dominant hand is going to be playing the driving eighth notes.

To help you build up the non-dominant hand, I’ve put an exercise in the downloads area called “8 On A Hand” which is taken from Stone Killer in Joe Morello’s Master Studies.
In this exercise, you’ll play a constant loop of 8 beats with you right hand followed by 8 beats with your left hand. And you’ll keep repeating this. Do this exercise for a minimum of 2 minutes and track your BPM progress over the course of your practice sessions. You want your hands to be nice and smooth and controlled. The goal BPM for this track is 125. But you don’t have to stop there.

Click this link to download the PDF.

The video below explains this exercise and how it relates to the track. In part 2 I start to dive into the grooves in the track. So keep checking back for part 2.