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It's Been So Long · The Living Tombstone

EXERCISE 3 OF 20
Fill at bar 16 and 48 (a small one)
33 / 68 BARS COVERED
0 / 20 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 2
PART A
PART S2
CHORUS
PART G
PART S5
CHORUS 2
PART G
BREAK
OUTRO
7 groovesDGAJS2+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 1
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play It's Been So Long on drums

68 bars of 4/4 at a walking 96 BPM, 2:49 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
96 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
68
LENGTH
2:49
DIFFICULTY
58/100

snare through bars 1-5, silence through bars 6-8, toms through bars 9-12, hi-hat through bars 13-20, snare through bars 21-37 and silence through bars 38-40, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-27, 29-35 and 53-59 -- 36.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    21
    1.....2.....3.....4.....
CC |x-----x-----x-----x-----|
SD |------x-----------x-----|
BD |x-----------x-----------|
HF |---x-----x-----x-----x--|
It's Been So Long -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 16, 48 and 68.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 17 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 -- G, D -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through the Chorus and Part G -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  4. Bars 21-61 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  5. Through the Outro -- 4 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is It's Been So Long?

96 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second 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 It's Been So Long hard to play on drums?

58 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 33 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

68 bars, about 2:49 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 6 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, 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 It's Been So Long?

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 16, 48 and 68.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 68 BARS ANALYSED