← SONGS

Fistful of Steel · Rage Against The Machine

EXERCISE 1 OF 27
Groove C -- Chorus
0 / 100 BARS COVERED
0 / 27 PASSED · 22 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 2, CHORUS 3
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
PART E
CHORUS 3
BREAK
PART H
BREAK 2
OUTRO
8 groovesCEHS1S10+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 3
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Fistful of Steel on drums

100 bars of 4/4 at a walking 77 BPM, 5:10 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
77 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
100
LENGTH
5:10
DIFFICULTY
39/100

silence through bars 1-9, hi-hat through bars 10-16, snare through bars 17-29, hi-hat through bars 30-37, snare through bars 38-49 and hi-hat through bars 50-57, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-12, 14-16 and 30-37, and 1 more place -- 28.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Fistful of Steel -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 9, 13, 17, 29, 49, 68 and 3 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 22 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 -- C -- 4 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- E, H -- 4 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  3. Bars 9-33 -- 8 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Bars 34-70 -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 23 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Fistful of Steel?

77 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is Fistful of Steel hard to play on drums?

39 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 27 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

100 bars, about 5:10 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 5 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, mid 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 Fistful of Steel?

4 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 9, 13, 17, 29, 49, 68 and 3 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 100 BARS ANALYSED