ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Dead! on drums

155 bars at 195 BPM -- fast, and 3:11 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO: 195 BPM
TIME: 4/4
BARS: 155
LENGTH: 3:11
DIFFICULTY: 69/100

silence through bars 1-4, snare through bars 5-12, hi-hat through bars 13-28, toms through bars 29-32, ride through bars 33-46 and kick and crashes through bars 47-50, and 8 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 13-20, 23-28 and 51-58, and 1 more place -- 18.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    13                       14
    1.....2.....3.....4..... 1.....2.....3.....4.....
CC |x-----------------------|------------------------|
HH |------x-----x-----x-----|X-----x-----X-----o-----|
SD |------X-----------X-----|------X-----------X-----|
BD |x-----------x-----------|x-----------x-----------|

Dead! -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

6 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 4, 29, 30, 32, 46, 67 and 8 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 37 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.

The grooves the song is built on -- E -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
The grooves the song is built on -- C, M -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
Bars 4-109 -- 5 exercises, about 18 minutes.
Through Part A and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
Through the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 25 minutes.
Through the Chorus and Part N -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
Through the Chorus and Part N -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes. Open above.
Bars 47-88 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
and 3 more sittings after that.

START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Dead!?

195 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second notes. At that speed the thirty-second notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Dead! hard to play on drums?

69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 55 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

155 bars, about 3:11 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 37 exercises over 11 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor 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 Dead!?

6 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 4, 29, 30, 32, 46, 67 and 8 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 155 BARS ANALYSED