DEFTONES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I cant Even breath

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-9, 11-17 and 21, and 14 more places -- 51.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
112 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
131
LENGTH
3:31
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 112 BPM
I CANT EVEN BREATH · BAR 3

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 29 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 54 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 84 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 84, 98 and 112 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 cant Even breath use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 112 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 51.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 3-9, 11-17, 21 and 25, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in I cant Even breath hard?

29 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 54 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 · 131 BARS ANALYSED