← SONGS

Building the Church · Steve Vai

EXERCISE 1 OF 29
Groove D -- Chorus
0 / 110 BARS COVERED
0 / 29 PASSED · 33 BARS LIT
CHORUS
PART G
CHORUS 2
PART G
PART B
CHORUS 3
PART B
PART G
OUTRO 2
4 groovesDBGS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 5
LAND · 5
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Building the Church on drums

110 bars of 4/4 at a walking 94 BPM, 4:41 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

62 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
94 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
110
LENGTH
4:41
DIFFICULTY
62/100

silence through bars 1-4 and hi-hat through bars 5-110.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-16, 32-34 and 36-38, and 8 more places -- 31.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

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

The fills

5 fills to learn, played 15 times: bars 20, 27, 31, 35, 47, 51 and 9 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 23 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 19 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Bars 9-32 -- 9 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Bars 30-105 -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  5. Bars 39-48 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  6. Bars 46-94 -- 5 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Building the Church?

94 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 Building the Church hard to play on drums?

62 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 48 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

110 bars, about 4:41 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 23 exercises over 7 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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 Building the Church?

5 fills to learn, played 15 times: bars 20, 27, 31, 35, 47, 51 and 9 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 110 BARS ANALYSED