Cry of the Black Birds · Amon Amarth

164 bars at 173 BPM -- fast, and 3:48 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

MetalRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
173 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
164
LENGTH
3:48
DIFFICULTY
84/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 34% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 49-55, 57-63 and 65-71, and 5 more places -- 33.5% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 173 BPM
CRY OF THE BLACK BIRDS · BAR 49
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

13 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 20 and 17 more.

LOOP · 173 BPM
BARS 2-4 · LANDS ON BAR 5 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 173 BPM
BAR 8 · LANDS ON BAR 9
LOOP · 173 BPM
BAR 12 · LANDS ON BAR 13
LOOP · 173 BPM
BAR 20 · LANDS ON BAR 21 · PLAYED 4 TIMES

9 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

164 bars across 9 sections: 124 keep time, 24 are fills and 5 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 155-163.

PART D
PART G
PART L
CHORUS
PART G
PART W
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesOGLWD+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Cry of the Black Birds?

173 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 Cry of the Black Birds hard to play on drums?

84 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 77 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

164 bars, about 3:48 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 43 exercises over 13 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 Cry of the Black Birds?

13 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 20 and 17 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 164 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Amon Amarth drum parts

EVERY AMON AMARTH CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →