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Dark · Catch your Breath

Dark · Catch your Breath
EXERCISE 1 OF 25
Groove E (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 138 BARS COVERED
0 / 25 PASSED · 18 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 2, OUTRO
COUNT-IN
PART C
BREAK
CHORUS
BREAK 2
PART K
CHORUS 2
BREAK 4
OUTRO
11 groovesDKS1S12S5+6Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
FILL · 3
LAND · 3
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Dark on drums

138 bars at 184 BPM -- fast, and 3:00 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
184 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
138
LENGTH
3:00
DIFFICULTY
38/100

silence through bars 1-10, hi-hat through bars 11-21, kick and crashes through bars 22-26, silence through bars 27-34, snare through bars 35-50 and silence through bars 51-58, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 36-37, 40-41 and 44-45, and 7 more places -- 18.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    36               37
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-------x-------|x-------x-------|
SD |--x-x---x---x-x-|--------x-----x-|
BD |------x---x-----|x-----x-----x---|
Dark -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

3 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 42, 90, 98, 105, 106, 130 and 1 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 21 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 -- E (a two-bar phrase), C -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- K -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Bars 13-43 -- 6 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 35-59 -- 3 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  5. Bars 59-107 -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 31 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Dark?

184 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 Dark hard to play on drums?

38 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 34 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

138 bars, about 3:00 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 21 exercises over 6 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, 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 Dark?

3 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 42, 90, 98, 105, 106, 130 and 1 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 138 BARS ANALYSED