Just Let Me Breathe · Dream Theater

174 bars of 4/4 at 130 BPM, about 5:25 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

83 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO

130 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

174

LENGTH

5:25

DIFFICULTY

83/100

silence through bars 1-4, snare through bars 5-14, toms through bars 15-18, ride through bars 19-22, snare through bars 23-33 and toms through bars 34-46, and 23 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 31-33, 47-49 and 51-53, and 5 more places -- 13.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    51
    1...............2...............3...............4...............
HH |o---------------o---------------o---------------o---------------|
SD |----------------x-----------x-------------------x-----------x---|
BD |x---x---x---x---------------------------x-----------x-----------|

14 fills to learn, played 24 times: bars 30, 34, 38, 42, 43, 44 and 18 more.

It cuts the song into 78 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 -- I -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes. Open above.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- BF -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
4. Through Part B -- 3 exercises, about 20 minutes.
5. Through Part B and Part C -- 2 exercises, about 17 minutes.
6. Through Part C -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
7. Bars 18-31 -- 5 exercises, about 31 minutes.
8. Through Part G and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
9. and 20 more sittings after that.