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I Would Hurt a Fly · Built to Spill

EXERCISE 16 OF 32
Join Chorus 2 to Part J (bars 53-55)
91 / 123 BARS COVERED
0 / 32 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS 2, PART J
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
PART J
PART K
OUTRO 2
6 groovesAOGKS7+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 6
LAND · 6
RUN · 2
JOIN · 6
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play I Would Hurt a Fly on drums

123 bars, 7:21, at 67 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

55 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
67 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
123
LENGTH
7:21
DIFFICULTY
55/100

hi-hat through bars 1-40, ride through bars 41-46, hi-hat through bars 47-61, toms through bars 62-65, ride through bars 66-71 and silence through bars 72-76, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-14, 16 and 18, and 9 more places -- 29.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

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

The fills

6 fills to learn, played 24 times: bars 23, 25, 38, 39, 40, 43 and 18 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 25 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 -- A, O -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Bars 1-46 -- 8 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Bars 53-59 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  5. Bars 59-71 -- 5 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 23 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is I Would Hurt a Fly?

67 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 I Would Hurt a Fly hard to play on drums?

55 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 28 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

123 bars, about 7:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 25 exercises over 7 sittings, about 26 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 I Would Hurt a Fly?

6 fills to learn, played 24 times: bars 23, 25, 38, 39, 40, 43 and 18 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 123 BARS ANALYSED