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River Of Tears · Eric Clapton

EXERCISE 1 OF 7
Groove A -- Chorus
0 / 126 BARS COVERED
0 / 7 PASSED · 81 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO
CHORUS
OUTRO
BREAK 2
3 groovesAS4S2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
SECTION · 1
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play River Of Tears on drums

126 bars of 6/4 -- not four -- at 115 BPM, 6:34 of playing on ride, snare, high tom, mid tom and floor tom.

21 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

TEMPO
115 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
126
LENGTH
6:34
DIFFICULTY
21/100

ride through bars 1-84 and silence through bars 85-126.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-7, 9-23 and 25-75, and 1 more place -- 97.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    1
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a
RD |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |x---x-x-x---x---x-x-x---|
River Of Tears -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 6 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 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  2. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 20 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is River Of Tears?

115 BPM, in 6/4, with the time kept in sixteenth 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 River Of Tears hard to play on drums?

21 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit. The beat itself is 16 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

126 bars, about 6:34 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 6 exercises over 2 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

ride, snare, high tom, mid tom and floor tom. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 126 BARS ANALYSED