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Father Time · Stratovarius

EXERCISE 1 OF 41
Groove O -- Chorus
0 / 195 BARS COVERED
0 / 41 PASSED · 63 BARS LIT
PART E
PART J
CHORUS
PART J
CHORUS 2
PART J
CHORUS 3
CHORUS 4
12 groovesOJEBS11+7Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 10
LAND · 10
RUN · 3
JOIN · 7
LINK · 2
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Father Time on drums

195 bars, 10:21, at 75 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
75 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
195
LENGTH
10:21
DIFFICULTY
66/100

snare through bars 1-10, hi-hat through bars 11-18, silence through bars 19-20, hi-hat through bars 21-50, toms through bars 51-52 and ride through bars 53-72, and 13 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 53-59, 61-66 and 95-101, and 7 more places -- 34.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    54
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
RD |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
Father Time -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

10 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 10, 14, 51, 52, 60, 67 and 15 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 30 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 -- O -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- J -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  3. Through Part E -- 6 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  4. Bars 9-53 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. Bars 53-95 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  6. Bars 79-134 -- 6 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  7. Bars 141-189 -- 8 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  8. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Father Time?

75 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 Father Time hard to play on drums?

66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 62 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

195 bars, about 10:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 30 exercises over 8 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, 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 Father Time?

10 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 10, 14, 51, 52, 60, 67 and 15 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 195 BARS ANALYSED