TALKING HEADS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Psycho Killer

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-20, 22 and 24, and 14 more places -- 58.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
133
LENGTH
4:26
DIFFICULTY
27/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
PSYCHO KILLER · BAR 22

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 27 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 90 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 90, 105 and 120 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 Psycho Killer use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 58.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-20, 22, 24 and 28, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Psycho Killer hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 27 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how many limbs land on the same note the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 133 BARS ANALYSED