ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Follow The Signs on drums

193 bars at 240 BPM -- fast, and 3:13 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO: 240 BPM
TIME: 4/4
BARS: 193
LENGTH: 3:13
DIFFICULTY: 68/100

snare through bars 1-2, kick and crashes through bars 3-15, snare through bars 16-28, hi-hat through bars 29-36, snare through bars 37-60 and ride through bars 61-64, and 8 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 11-13, 15-16 and 19-21, and 13 more places -- 19.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    11                               12
    1.......2.......3.......4....... 1.......2.......3.......4.......
CC |x---------------x---------------|x---------------x---------------|
SD |--------------------------------|x-------------------------------|
BD |x-x-x---x---x-------x---x-x-x---|----x-------x---x-x-x-x-x---x---|

Follow The Signs -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

10 fills to learn, played 31 times: bars 10, 18, 26, 28, 33, 34 and 25 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 52 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.

The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
The grooves the song is built on -- U, AI -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
Through Part A -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
Through Part A and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes.
Through the Chorus and Part D -- 4 exercises, about 14 minutes.
Through Part D and Part I -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes.
Through Part P -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
Bars 30-53 -- 6 exercises, about 28 minutes.
and 9 more sittings after that.

START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Follow The Signs?

240 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second notes. At that speed the thirty-second notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Follow The Signs hard to play on drums?

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 39 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

193 bars, about 3:13 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 52 exercises over 17 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor 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 Follow The Signs?

10 fills to learn, played 31 times: bars 10, 18, 26, 28, 33, 34 and 25 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 193 BARS ANALYSED