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Riverdance · Riverdance

Riverdance · Riverdance
EXERCISE 4 OF 15
Groove C
48 / 105 BARS COVERED
0 / 15 PASSED · 5 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B
PART B
CHORUS
OUTRO
BREAK
5 groovesLS5BNS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Riverdance on drums

105 bars of 6/4 -- not four -- at 220 BPM, 2:44 of playing on hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

31 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how many notes a second it asks for the part that decides it.

TEMPO
220 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
105
LENGTH
2:44
DIFFICULTY
31/100

silence through bars 1-4, toms through bars 5-32, snare through bars 33-64, hi-hat through bars 65-74 and silence through bars 75-105.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 33-35, 37-39 and 41-43, and 5 more places -- 34.3% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    33
    1.....2.....3.....4.....5.....6.....7.....
SD |x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|
Riverdance -- 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 14 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 -- L, B -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- N -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
  3. Through Part B and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  4. Bars 29-74 -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 15 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Riverdance?

220 BPM, in 6/4, 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 Riverdance hard to play on drums?

31 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how many notes a second it asks for the part that decides it. The beat itself is 3 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

105 bars, about 2:44 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 14 exercises over 5 sittings, about 22 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 105 BARS ANALYSED