THE LIVING TOMBSTONE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I Can't Fix You

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 77-83, 85-91 and 93-99, and 1 more place -- 17.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
174 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
4:15
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 174 BPM
I CAN'T FIX YOU · BAR 78

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 25 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 60 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 131 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 131, 152 and 174 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 I Can't Fix You use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 174 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 77-83, 85-91, 93-99 and 101-107. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in I Can't Fix You hard?

25 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 185 BARS ANALYSED