Flying the Black Flag · Shadow Of Intent

123 bars of 4/4 at 140 BPM, about 3:30 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO

140 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

123

LENGTH

3:30

DIFFICULTY

82/100

silence through bars 1-4, ride through bars 5-14, toms through bars 15-16, snare through bars 17-21, toms through bars 22-24 and snare through bars 25-48, and 14 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 5-10, 13 and 104-107 -- 9.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    5                                                                6
    1...............2...............3...............4............... 1...............2...............3...............4...............
RD |--------x-------x---------------x-------x---------------x-------|--------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------|
T1 |x-----------------------x-----------------------x---------------|x---------------------------------------------------------------|
FT |x-----------------------x-----------------------x---------------|x---------------------------------------------------------------|
BD |x-----------------------x-----------------------x---------------|x---------------------------------------------------------------|

13 fills to learn, played 30 times: bars 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 and 24 more.

It cuts the song into 50 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 -- B -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- AB -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- AE -- 1 exercise, about 23 minutes. Open above.
4. Through Part B and Part P -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes.
5. Bars 5-34 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
6. Through Part P and Part V -- 4 exercises, about 17 minutes.
7. Through Part V and Part AA -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
8. Bars 43-52 -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
9. and 9 more sittings after that.