RADIOHEAD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Fake Plastic Trees (Album Version)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-27 and 43-59 -- 38.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
77 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
67
LENGTH
3:29
DIFFICULTY
39/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 77 BPM
FAKE PLASTIC TREES (ALBUM VERSION) · BAR 22

It is played on the hi-hat, counted in sixteenth 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 39 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 58 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.

Tempo goes 58, 67 and 77 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 Fake Plastic Trees (Album Version) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, in 4/4 at 77 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 38.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-27 and 43-59. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Fake Plastic Trees (Album Version) hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 67 BARS ANALYSED