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Decks Dark · Radiohead

EXERCISE 8 OF 8
Play the whole song with the record
55 / 61 BARS COVERED
0 / 8 PASSED · 61 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
BREAK
OUTRO
BREAK 2
4 groovesDS1S5S3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
SECTION · 1
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Decks Dark on drums

61 bars, 3:36, at 70 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
70 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
61
LENGTH
3:36
DIFFICULTY
33/100

silence through bars 1-5, hi-hat through bars 6-59 and silence through bars 60-61.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-8, 10-18 and 20-26, and 4 more places -- 85.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    6
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x------x--------|
Decks Dark -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 7 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 -- D -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  2. Bars 5-60 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Decks Dark?

70 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Decks Dark hard to play on drums?

33 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 20 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

61 bars, about 3:36 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 7 exercises over 3 sittings, about 21 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 61 BARS ANALYSED