ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Moon on drums

228 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 5:42 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

73 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO: 160 BPM
TIME: 4/4
BARS: 228
LENGTH: 5:42
DIFFICULTY: 73/100

hi-hat through bars 3-4, ride through bars 5-6, hi-hat through bars 7-8, ride through bars 9-10, hi-hat through bars 11-12 and ride through bars 13-34, and 25 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 18-20, 22-24 and 26-28, and 26 more places -- 31.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    18                                               19
    1...........2...........3...........4........... 1...........2...........3...........4...........
RD |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x--x--x--x--|
SD |------------------------x-----------------------|------------------------x-----------------------|
T2 |------x-----x-----------------------------------|------------------------------------------------|
BD |x-----------------x-----------------------------|x-----------x-----------------x-----x-----------|

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

The fills

16 fills to learn, played 39 times: bars 2, 16, 32, 35, 36, 37 and 33 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 51 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 -- H -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
The grooves the song is built on -- G -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
Through Part D -- 4 exercises, about 32 minutes.
Through Part D and the Chorus -- 7 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
Bars 35-65 -- 7 exercises, about 32 minutes.
Through the Chorus 2 and Part U -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
Through the Chorus 2 and Part U -- 6 exercises, about 27 minutes.
and 9 more sittings after that.

START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Moon?

160 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 Moon hard to play on drums?

73 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 60 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

228 bars, about 5:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 51 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 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 Moon?

16 fills to learn, played 39 times: bars 2, 16, 32, 35, 36, 37 and 33 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 228 BARS ANALYSED