TALK TALK · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Such A Shame

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-33, 51-65 and 70-83, and 2 more places -- 61.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
112 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
114
LENGTH
4:03
DIFFICULTY
68/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 112 BPM
SUCH A SHAME · BAR 20

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 59 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 68 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 73 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 73, 86, 99 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 Such A Shame use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 112 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 61.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19-33, 51-65, 70-83 and 85-88, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Such A Shame hard?

59 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 114 BARS ANALYSED