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Decay · Elwood Stray

Decay · Elwood Stray
EXERCISE 1 OF 53
Groove K -- Chorus
0 / 131 BARS COVERED
0 / 53 PASSED · 34 BARS LIT
PART C
PART B
PART F
PART O
CHORUS
PART S9
OUTRO
9 groovesKBS9FO+4Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 9
FILL · 11
LAND · 11
RUN · 2
JOIN · 8
LINK · 5
SECTION · 6
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Decay on drums

131 bars at 156 BPM -- fast, and 3:22 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
131
LENGTH
3:22
DIFFICULTY
43/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-28, snare through bars 29-40, hi-hat through bars 41-50, snare through bars 51-52 and hi-hat through bars 53-56, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 29-35, 37-39 and 57-63, and 8 more places -- 29.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    29
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---x---x---x---|
SD |--------x-------|
BD |x-----x-----x---|
Decay -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

11 fills to learn, played 15 times: bars 12, 20, 28, 36, 40, 56 and 9 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 41 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 -- K, B -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 2 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Bars 5-19 -- 7 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through Part B and Part F -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. Through Part F and Part B -- 7 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  6. Through Part F and Part O -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. Through Part O and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  8. Through the Chorus and Part S9 -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  9. and 3 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Decay?

156 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 Decay hard to play on drums?

43 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 28 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

131 bars, about 3:22 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 41 exercises over 11 sittings, about 26 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 Decay?

11 fills to learn, played 15 times: bars 12, 20, 28, 36, 40, 56 and 9 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 131 BARS ANALYSED