Copperhead Road · Steve Earle

172 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 4:18 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

Country / FolkRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
172
LENGTH
4:18
DIFFICULTY
35/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 29% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 103-105, 107 and 109, and 17 more places -- 28.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 160 BPM
COPPERHEAD ROAD · BAR 103
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 8 times: bars 110, 114, 120, 128, 136, 144 and 2 more.

LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 110 · LANDS ON BAR 111 · PLAYED 8 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

172 bars across 9 sections: 120 keep time, 8 are fills, 25 are stops and 15 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 13-57.

COUNT-IN
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
PART C
OUTRO 2
6 groovesACS1BS3+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Copperhead Road?

160 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 Copperhead Road hard to play on drums?

35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 46 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

172 bars, about 4:18 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 8 exercises over 3 sittings, about 22 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Copperhead Road?

1 fill to learn, played 8 times: bars 110, 114, 120, 128, 136, 144 and 2 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 172 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Steve Earle drum parts

AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →