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Colony of Birchmen · Mastodon

EXERCISE 5 OF 63
Groove D (a two-bar phrase)
46 / 136 BARS COVERED
0 / 63 PASSED · 8 BARS LIT · IN THE PART C
PART C
PART C
PART K
CHORUS
PART M
CHORUS 2
PART AE
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
10 groovesSKCHAI+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 13
FILL · 11
LAND · 11
RUN · 2
JOIN · 11
LINK · 7
SECTION · 7
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Colony of Birchmen on drums

136 bars of 4/4 at 126 BPM, about 4:00 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

72 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
126 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
136
LENGTH
4:00
DIFFICULTY
72/100

silence through bars 1-5, toms through bars 6-13, hi-hat through bars 14-20, toms through bars 21-35, hi-hat through bars 36-42 and toms through bars 43-49, and 14 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 58-60, 64-65 and 70-71, and 5 more places -- 12.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    64
    1e+a2e+a3e+a
CC |x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |------x-----|
BD |x---x-----x-|
Colony of Birchmen -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

11 fills to learn, played 33 times: bars 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 and 27 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 51 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 -- S, K -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  3. Through Part C -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  4. Through Part C -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes. Open above.
  5. Through Part C and Part F -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  6. Through Part F and Part H -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  7. Bars 18-43 -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  8. Bars 22-46 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  9. and 9 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Colony of Birchmen?

126 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 Colony of Birchmen hard to play on drums?

72 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 30 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

136 bars, about 4:00 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 51 exercises over 17 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, 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 Colony of Birchmen?

11 fills to learn, played 33 times: bars 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54 and 27 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 136 BARS ANALYSED