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Death Of John Smith · NOFX

EXERCISE 2 OF 57
Groove X -- Part X
37 / 163 BARS COVERED
0 / 57 PASSED · 18 BARS LIT · IN THE PART X
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
GROOVE · 14
FILL · 8
LAND · 8
RUN · 3
JOIN · 11
LINK · 4
SECTION · 8
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Death Of John Smith on drums

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.

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

TEMPO
300 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
163
LENGTH
2:18
DIFFICULTY
82/100

silence through bars 1-14, snare through bars 15-30, toms through bars 31-36, hi-hat through bars 37-109, ride through bars 110-127 and hi-hat through bars 128-153, and 1 more change after that.

The beat

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.

    52
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |--o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |x---xx--xx--xx--|
Death Of John Smith -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

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

What the course does

It cuts the song into 48 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 -- L -- 1 exercise, about 20 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- X, D -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part D and Part E -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 29-38 -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  5. Through Part E and Part G -- 4 exercises, about 16 minutes.
  6. Through Part G -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  7. Through Part G -- 1 exercise, about 21 minutes.
  8. Through Part G and Part H -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  9. and 10 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

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