Death Of John Smith · NOFX

163 bars at 300 BPM -- fast, and 2:18 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

PunkAlternative / Indie150 BPM and up
TEMPO
300 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
163
LENGTH
2:18
DIFFICULTY
82/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 26% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 52-53, 55-57 and 59-61, and 17 more places -- 26.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 300 BPM
DEATH OF JOHN SMITH · BAR 52
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

8 fills to learn, played 20 times: bars 14, 36, 40, 51, 66, 70 and 14 more.

LOOP · 300 BPM
BAR 14 · LANDS ON BAR 15
LOOP · 300 BPM
BAR 36 · LANDS ON BAR 37
LOOP · 300 BPM
BAR 40 · LANDS ON BAR 41 · PLAYED 6 TIMES
LOOP · 300 BPM
BAR 66 · LANDS ON BAR 67

4 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

163 bars across 13 sections: 107 keep time, 20 are fills and 23 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 111-127.

COUNT-IN
PART D
CHORUS
PART P
CHORUS 2
PART X
PART G
OUTRO
BREAK
10 groovesLPXDG+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Death Of John Smith?

300 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 Death Of John Smith hard to play on drums?

82 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 81 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

163 bars, about 2:18 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 48 exercises over 18 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, 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 Death Of John Smith?

8 fills to learn, played 20 times: bars 14, 36, 40, 51, 66, 70 and 14 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 163 BARS ANALYSED
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