Communication Breakdown · Led Zeppelin

109 bars at 175 BPM -- fast, and 2:29 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

RockJazz / Blues150 BPM and upIntermediate
TEMPO
175 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
2:29
DIFFICULTY
48/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 68% of the song

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 9-27, 29-31 and 37-52, and 2 more places -- 68.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

LOOP · 175 BPM
COMMUNICATION BREAKDOWN · BARS 9-10
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 28 and 80.

LOOP · 175 BPM
BAR 28 · LANDS ON BAR 29 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

109 bars across 10 sections: 89 keep time, 2 are fills and 2 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 90-109.

PART A
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
PART G
CHORUS 3
PART G
OUTRO 2
4 groovesCGAS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Communication Breakdown?

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 Communication Breakdown hard to play on drums?

48 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 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

109 bars, about 2:29 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 4 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Communication Breakdown?

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 28 and 80.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 109 BARS ANALYSED
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