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Bubbles · System of a Down

EXERCISE 3 OF 32
Groove B -- Part B (a two-bar phrase)
24 / 83 BARS COVERED
0 / 32 PASSED · 20 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B, OUTRO
PART B
PART F
PART B
PART F
PART B
CHORUS 3
PART M
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesDBFMJFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 9
FILL · 3
LAND · 3
RUN · 3
JOIN · 6
LINK · 4
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Bubbles on drums

83 bars at 175 BPM -- fast, and 1:53 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

61 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
175 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
83
LENGTH
1:53
DIFFICULTY
61/100

toms through bar 1 and hi-hat through bars 2-83.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 10-13, 26-29 and 44-51, and 1 more place -- 28.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    10               11
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o-o---o-o---o---|o-o---o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |x-x---x-x---x---|x-x---x-x-x-x-x-|
BD |x-x---x-x---x---|x-x---x-x-x-x-x-|
Bubbles -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

3 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 1, 21, 31 and 39.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 28 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 -- 2 exercises, about 17 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 4 exercises, about 23 minutes. Open above.
  3. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part F -- 2 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  5. Bars 10-22 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  6. Bars 18-52 -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  7. Through Part J and Part M -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  8. Through Part J and Part M -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  9. and 2 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Bubbles?

175 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 Bubbles hard to play on drums?

61 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

83 bars, about 1:53 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 28 exercises over 10 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor 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 Bubbles?

3 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 1, 21, 31 and 39.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 83 BARS ANALYSED