ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Aphasiac on drums

153 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 3:50 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

47 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO: 160 BPM
TIME: 4/4
BARS: 153
LENGTH: 3:50
DIFFICULTY: 47/100

hi-hat through bars 1-16, snare through bars 17-32, hi-hat through bars 33-56, snare through bars 57-71, kick and crashes through bars 72-73 and silence through bars 74-80, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 9-15, 17-19 and 21-23, and 7 more places -- 24.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    9                10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|----------------|
HH |----o---x-----o-|----o---o---o---|
SD |----x-------x---|----x-------x---|
FT |----------------|--------------x-|
BD |x-x-------x---x-|--x-------x-----|

Aphasiac -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

8 fills to learn, played 30 times: bars 16, 20, 24, 48, 52, 56 and 24 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 35 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.

The grooves the song is built on -- D, N -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
The grooves the song is built on -- K -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes.
Through Part A -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
Through Part A and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
Bars 28-48 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
Bars 45-73 -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
Through Part N and the Outro -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
Through Part N and the Outro -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes.
and 2 more sittings after that.

START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Aphasiac?

160 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 Aphasiac hard to play on drums?

47 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 39 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

153 bars, about 3:50 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 35 exercises over 10 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Aphasiac?

8 fills to learn, played 30 times: bars 16, 20, 24, 48, 52, 56 and 24 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 153 BARS ANALYSED