AC/DC · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-30, 41-56 and 68-69, and 2 more places -- 41.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
134 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
128
LENGTH
3:49
DIFFICULTY
45/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 134 BPM
DIRTY DEEDS DONE DIRT CHEAP · BAR 19

It is played on snare, floor tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 34 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 45 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 101 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 101, 117 and 134 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 Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap use?

A one-bar groove on snare, floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 134 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 41.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19-30, 41-56, 68-69 and 87-98, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap hard?

34 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 45 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 128 BARS ANALYSED