Ashes To Ashes · Blind Guardian

249 bars at 200 BPM -- fast, and 4:59 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO

200 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

249

LENGTH

4:59

DIFFICULTY

57/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-14, snare through bars 15-18, kick and crashes through bars 19-26, hi-hat through bars 27-88 and snare through bars 89-90, and 11 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15-18, 31-37 and 51-53, and 16 more places -- 35.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    31
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |--o---o---o---o-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |xx--xx--xx--xx--|

3 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 117, 177 and 189.

It cuts the song into 47 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 -- F, C -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- J -- 4 exercises, about 33 minutes.
3. Bars 15-32 -- 6 exercises, about 35 minutes.
4. Through the Chorus 2 and Part J -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
5. Bars 50-67 -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
6. Through Part N and Part C -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
7. Through the Chorus 4 and Part R -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
8. Bars 93-109 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
9. and 4 more sittings after that.