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Planet Smasher · Devin Townsend

EXERCISE 1 OF 49
Groove C -- Chorus
0 / 175 BARS COVERED
0 / 49 PASSED · 45 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO 2
PART B
CHORUS
PART O
PART S
PART W
PART Y
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
10 groovesCSYWB+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 15
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 10
LINK · 5
SECTION · 8
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Planet Smasher on drums

175 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 5:49 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
175
LENGTH
5:49
DIFFICULTY
68/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-8, toms through bars 9-49, snare through bars 50-53, ride through bars 54-57, hi-hat through bars 58-65 and ride through bars 66-73, and 11 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-47 and 158-175 -- 26% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    22
    1.......2.......3.......4.......
FT |x---x---x---x---x---x---x---x---|
BD |x-------x-------x-------x-------|
Planet Smasher -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 11 times: bars 48, 49, 87, 91, 97, 113 and 5 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 44 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, S -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  3. Through Part B and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  5. Through Part L -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
  6. Through the Chorus and Part L -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  7. Through Part L and Part N -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  8. Through Part N and Part O -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  9. and 8 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Planet Smasher?

120 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 Planet Smasher hard to play on drums?

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 35 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

175 bars, about 5:49 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 44 exercises over 16 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, 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 Planet Smasher?

4 fills to learn, played 11 times: bars 48, 49, 87, 91, 97, 113 and 5 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 175 BARS ANALYSED