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Black Muddy River · Grateful Dead

EXERCISE 29 OF 34
Run B2 · Part B (bars 39-69)
101 / 103 BARS COVERED
0 / 34 PASSED · 31 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B
CHORUS
PART B
CHORUS 2
PART B
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesCBTS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 9
LAND · 9
RUN · 2
JOIN · 3
LINK · 3
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Black Muddy River on drums

103 bars, 5:52, at 62 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom and kick and nothing else.

38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
62 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
103
LENGTH
5:52
DIFFICULTY
38/100

hi-hat through bars 2-103.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4, 7-11 and 16, and 12 more places -- 30.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    16
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-----x-|
Black Muddy River -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

9 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 5, 13, 17, 28, 29, 33 and 11 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 24 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 -- C, B -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- T -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Bars 8-21 -- 6 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  4. Through Part B and the Chorus 2 -- 10 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. Bars 39-103 -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes. Open above.
  6. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Black Muddy River?

62 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Black Muddy River 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 24 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

103 bars, about 5:52 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 24 exercises over 6 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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 Black Muddy River?

9 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 5, 13, 17, 28, 29, 33 and 11 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 103 BARS ANALYSED