Bertha · Grateful Dead

245 bars at 170 BPM -- fast, and 5:45 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

RockCountry / Folk150 BPM and up
TEMPO
170 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
245
LENGTH
5:45
DIFFICULTY
51/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 70% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-49, 57-77 and 85-98, and 10 more places -- 70.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

LOOP · 170 BPM
BERTHA · BAR 6
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

3 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 188, 208, 209 and 3 more.

LOOP · 170 BPM
BARS 2-4 · LANDS ON BAR 5 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 170 BPM
BAR 188 · LANDS ON BAR 189
LOOP · 170 BPM
BARS 208-212 · LANDS ON BAR 213 · PLAYED 5 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

245 bars across 15 sections: 219 keep time, 9 are fills and 1 is silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 107-187.

CHORUS
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
CHORUS 4
8 groovesDGHFI+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Bertha?

170 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 Bertha hard to play on drums?

51 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 38 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

245 bars, about 5:45 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 31 exercises over 8 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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 Bertha?

3 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 188, 208, 209 and 3 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 245 BARS ANALYSED
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