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Pictures · System of a Down

EXERCISE 1 OF 19
Groove C -- Part C
0 / 82 BARS COVERED
0 / 19 PASSED · 17 BARS LIT
PART C
PART D
CHORUS
PART D
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
5 groovesHDCS1S2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 2
JOIN · 4
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Pictures on drums

82 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 2:03 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
82
LENGTH
2:03
DIFFICULTY
48/100

silence through bars 1-4, kick and crashes through bars 5-8, hi-hat through bars 9-22, toms through bars 23-26, snare through bars 27-33 and toms through bars 34-44, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-16, 18 and 20, and 7 more places -- 21.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    9
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |--o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |---x--X----x--X-|
BD |x---x---x---x---|
Pictures -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 24, 25, 26, 42, 43, 44 and 4 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 16 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 -- C -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- H, D -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Bars 9-27 -- 5 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  4. Bars 27-74 -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Pictures?

160 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 Pictures hard to play on drums?

48 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 65 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

82 bars, about 2:03 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 5 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Pictures?

2 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 24, 25, 26, 42, 43, 44 and 4 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 82 BARS ANALYSED