← SONGS

Black Knife · Toby Fox

EXERCISE 2 OF 18
Groove A
96 / 144 BARS COVERED
0 / 18 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B, CHORUS 2
PART B
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
PART B
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesDBEFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 4
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Black Knife on drums

144 bars of 4/4 at 148 BPM, about 3:54 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom and floor tom.

81 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
148 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
144
LENGTH
3:54
DIFFICULTY
81/100

hi-hat through bars 1-48, toms through bars 49-56, hi-hat through bars 57-120, toms through bars 121-128 and hi-hat through bars 129-144.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-48, 57-72 and 89-120, and 1 more place -- 66.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    18
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX|
SD |-r-------r--r---|
FT |X---X---X--X-X--|
Black Knife -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 16 and 88.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 16 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 -- D -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  2. Through Part B -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part B and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 1-49 -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  5. Bars 45-77 -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Black Knife?

148 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is Black Knife hard to play on drums?

81 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 61 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

144 bars, about 3:54 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 6 sittings, about 21 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Black Knife?

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 16 and 88.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 144 BARS ANALYSED