MALCOLM TODD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Chest Pain (I Love)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-8 and 34-40 -- 21.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
76 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
82
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
49/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 76 BPM
CHEST PAIN (I LOVE) · BAR 3

It is played on the kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 49 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 57 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 57, 67 and 76 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Chest Pain (I Love) use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 3/4 at 76 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-8 and 34-40. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Chest Pain (I Love) hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 49 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how fine the subdivision is.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 82 BARS ANALYSED