By Your Command · Devin Townsend

381 bars of 3/4 -- not four -- at 168 BPM, 8:31 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

MetalProgressive150 BPM and upShuffle / tripletAdvanced
TEMPO
168 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
381
LENGTH
8:31
DIFFICULTY
83/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 9% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-20, 22-24 and 26-28, and 7 more places -- 8.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

LOOP · 168 BPM
BY YOUR COMMAND · BAR 34
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

29 fills to learn, played 77 times: bars 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 16 and 71 more.

LOOP · 168 BPM
BARS 1-3 · LANDS ON BAR 4 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 168 BPM
BAR 9 · LANDS ON BAR 10 · PLAYED 10 TIMES
LOOP · 168 BPM
BAR 12 · LANDS ON BAR 13
LOOP · 168 BPM
BARS 16-17 · LANDS ON BAR 18 · PLAYED 2 TIMES

25 more fills are written out on the fills page.

THE SHAPE

How the song is built

381 bars across 33 sections: 204 keep time, 77 are fills, 60 are stops and 4 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 321-343.

CHORUS 2
PART K
PART BZ
26 groovesJKBZCCX+21Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is By Your Command?

168 BPM, in 3/4, 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 By Your Command hard to play on drums?

83 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 55 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

381 bars, about 8:31 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 133 exercises over 46 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, 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 By Your Command?

29 fills to learn, played 77 times: bars 1, 2, 3, 9, 12, 16 and 71 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 381 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Devin Townsend drum parts

EVERY DEVIN TOWNSEND CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →