Journey Through The Dark · Blind Guardian

225 bars at 180 BPM -- fast, and 5:00 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

MetalRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
225
LENGTH
5:00
DIFFICULTY
67/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 26% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-11, 14-15 and 23-24, and 16 more places -- 25.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 180 BPM
JOURNEY THROUGH THE DARK · BAR 59
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

26 fills to learn, played 54 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 48 more.

LOOP · 180 BPM
BARS 2-7 · LANDS ON BAR 8 · PLAYED 6 TIMES
LOOP · 180 BPM
BAR 9 · LANDS ON BAR 10
LOOP · 180 BPM
BAR 13 · LANDS ON BAR 14
LOOP · 180 BPM
BARS 16-17 · LANDS ON BAR 18 · PLAYED 6 TIMES

22 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

225 bars across 26 sections: 135 keep time, 54 are fills and 5 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 160-169.

CHORUS
PART W
PART AH
PART AQ
CHORUS 8
10 groovesGPWAHAQ+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Journey Through The Dark?

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

Is Journey Through The Dark hard to play on drums?

67 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 57 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

225 bars, about 5:00 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 80 exercises over 23 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 Journey Through The Dark?

26 fills to learn, played 54 times: bars 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 48 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 225 BARS ANALYSED
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