Althea · Grateful Dead

287 bars at 166 BPM -- fast, and 6:55 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

RockCountry / Folk150 BPM and up
TEMPO
166 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
287
LENGTH
6:55
DIFFICULTY
38/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 97% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-80, 82-128 and 130-160, and 6 more places -- 96.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

LOOP · 166 BPM
ALTHEA · BAR 2
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 261.

LOOP · 166 BPM
BAR 261 · LANDS ON BAR 262
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

287 bars: 281 keep time, 1 is a fill and 5 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 147-253.

OUTRO
1 grooveBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Althea?

166 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Althea hard to play on drums?

38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 17 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

287 bars, about 6:55 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 6 exercises over 2 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Althea?

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 261.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 287 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Grateful Dead drum parts

EVERY GRATEFUL DEAD CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →