Album Song 5 · Hemlok

251 bars at 228 BPM -- fast, and 4:34 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

81 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO

228 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

251

LENGTH

4:34

DIFFICULTY

81/100

ride through bars 1-11, hi-hat through bars 12-13, ride through bars 14-15, hi-hat through bars 16-24, ride through bars 25-26 and hi-hat through bars 27-32, and 38 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 23-24, 27-28 and 31-32, and 9 more places -- 9.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    23
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
CC |x-----------------------------------------------|
HH |------------o-----------o-----------o-----------|
SD |------x-----------x-----------x-----------x-----|
BD |x-----------x--x--------x-----------x-----------|

20 fills to learn, played 36 times: bars 4, 8, 12, 16, 22, 30 and 30 more.

It cuts the song into 77 exercises -- the grooves, the fills, and the joins between sections, which is where players actually come off -- and puts them in the order a teacher would. Each one opens on a reduction you can already play and adds the notes back a rung at a time, with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

1. The grooves the song is built on -- L -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- M (a two-bar phrase) -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- BD -- 1 exercise, about 15 minutes.
4. Through Part C -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes. Open above.
5. Through Part C -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
6. Through Part E -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
7. Bars 5-17 -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
8. Through Part E and Part H -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
9. and 21 more sittings after that.