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Cry of the Black Birds · Amon Amarth

EXERCISE 26 OF 57
Run G1 · Part G (bars 15-32)
131 / 164 BARS COVERED
0 / 57 PASSED · 18 BARS LIT · IN THE PART G
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
GROOVE · 10
FILL · 13
LAND · 13
RUN · 1
JOIN · 7
LINK · 6
SECTION · 6
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Cry of the Black Birds on drums

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.

84 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
173 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
164
LENGTH
3:48
DIFFICULTY
84/100

ride through bars 1-16, hi-hat through bars 17-48, ride through bars 49-80, kick and crashes through bars 81-82, hi-hat through bars 83-98 and ride through bars 99-114, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

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.

    49
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |X---------------|
RD |----x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |x---x---x---x---|
BD |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
Cry of the Black Birds -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

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

What the course does

It cuts the song into 43 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 -- O -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- L, G -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. Through Part B -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  4. Through Part D -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. Bars 1-15 -- 6 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  6. Through Part D and Part G -- 4 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  7. Through Part G and Part L -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  8. Bars 15-49 -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  9. and 5 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

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