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Dark Horse · Converge

Dark Horse · Converge
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EXERCISE 4 OF 42
Groove V -- Part V (a two-bar phrase)
22 / 105 BARS COVERED
0 / 42 PASSED · 8 BARS LIT · IN THE PART V
PART A
CHORUS
PART N
CHORUS 2
PART N
PART V
PART X
PART AA
OUTRO
BREAK
8 groovesENACS10A+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 2
JOIN · 8
LINK · 5
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Dark Horse on drums

105 bars at 175 BPM -- fast, and 2:39 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
175 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
105
LENGTH
2:39
DIFFICULTY
78/100

snare through bars 1-5, toms through bars 6-8, ride through bars 9-16, snare through bars 17-18, ride through bars 19-26 and snare through bars 27-28, and 10 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 9-10, 15 and 19-20, and 4 more places -- 10.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    9                    10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a
CC |x-------------------|x-------------------|
RD |--x-x-x-x-x-x-x-----|--x-x-x-x-x-x-x-----|
SD |--x---x---x---x-xxxx|--x---x---x---x-----|
T1 |--------------------|----------------xxxx|
BD |x--x-x--x--x-x------|x--x-x--x--x-x------|
Dark Horse -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 50 times: bars 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 44 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 34 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 -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- V, X -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  4. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  5. Through Part N and the Chorus 2 -- 3 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  6. Bars 25-62 -- 7 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  7. Bars 63-75 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  8. Through Part X and Part AA -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  9. and 3 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Dark Horse?

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 Dark Horse hard to play on drums?

78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 69 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

105 bars, about 2:39 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 34 exercises over 11 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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 Dark Horse?

7 fills to learn, played 50 times: bars 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11 and 44 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 105 BARS ANALYSED