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Blackwater · Will Simons and Matthew Park

Blackwater · Will Simons and Matthew Park
EXERCISE 10 OF 65
2-bar fill at bar 16 and 2 more
118 / 207 BARS COVERED
0 / 65 PASSED · 6 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 5
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 4
CHORUS 5
OUTRO
13 groovesCYJALB+8Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 15
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 3
JOIN · 17
LINK · 5
SECTION · 10
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Blackwater on drums

207 bars at 170 BPM -- fast, and 4:52 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
170 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
207
LENGTH
4:52
DIFFICULTY
78/100

snare through bars 1-9, hi-hat through bars 10-13, snare through bars 14-15, toms through bars 16-17, snare through bars 18-21 and hi-hat through bars 22-23, and 19 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3, 5-12 and 14-15, and 17 more places -- 26.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    3
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
CC |x-----------x-----------x-----------x-----------|
SD |------------------------x-----------------------|
BD |x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|
Blackwater -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 16, 17, 21, 24, 25, 28 and 10 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 57 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 -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- Y -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. The grooves the song is built on -- J -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  4. Bars 1-159 -- 3 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and Part J -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  6. Through Part J and Part M -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  7. Through Part M -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  8. Through Part M and the Chorus 2 -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  9. and 10 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Blackwater?

170 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second notes. At that speed the thirty-second notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Blackwater hard to play on drums?

78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 60 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

207 bars, about 4:52 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 57 exercises over 18 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor 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 Blackwater?

7 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 16, 17, 21, 24, 25, 28 and 10 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 207 BARS ANALYSED