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Never Say Die · Black Sabbath

EXERCISE 15 OF 16
4-bar fill at bar 87
91 / 91 BARS COVERED
0 / 16 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO 2
CHORUS
PART C
CHORUS 2
PART C
PART C
CHORUS 4
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
2 groovesACFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Never Say Die on drums

91 bars of 4/4 at a walking 95 BPM, 3:50 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
95 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
81/100

hi-hat through bars 1-16, ride through bars 17-26, hi-hat through bars 27-38, ride through bars 39-48, hi-hat through bars 49-52 and ride through bars 53-61, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-7, 9-15 and 27-37, and 3 more places -- 47.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    1
    1.......2.......3.......4.......
CC |x---------------x---------------|
HH |----x---x---x-------x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x-------x-------x---|
BD |x----------x----x--x----x--x----|
Never Say Die -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 60, 61, 87, 88, 89 and 90.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 13 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 -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part C -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 10 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Never Say Die?

95 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 Never Say Die hard to play on drums?

81 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 63 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

91 bars, about 3:50 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 13 exercises over 6 sittings, about 22 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 Never Say Die?

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 60, 61, 87, 88, 89 and 90.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED