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Communication Breakdown · Led Zeppelin

EXERCISE 1 OF 18
Groove C -- Chorus (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 109 BARS COVERED
0 / 18 PASSED · 73 BARS LIT
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
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Communication Breakdown on drums

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.

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

TEMPO
175 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
2:29
DIFFICULTY
48/100

silence through bars 1-6, snare through bars 7-24, hi-hat through bars 25-34 and snare through bars 35-109.

The beat

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.

    9                10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|--x-----x-------|
HH |----x---x---x---|----------------|
SD |----x-------x---|f-----------f---|
BD |x-x---x-x-x---x-|--x---x-x-------|
HF |----------------|x---------------|
Communication Breakdown -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

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

What the course does

It cuts the song into 16 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 -- C -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  3. Bars 51-64 -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

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