Rock and a Hard Place · Darren Korb

190 bars at 164 BPM -- fast, and 4:31 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

150 BPM and up
TEMPO
164 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
190
LENGTH
4:31
DIFFICULTY
73/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 28% of the song

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 6-8, 10-20 and 50-52, and 5 more places -- 27.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 164 BPM
ROCK AND A HARD PLACE · BARS 6-7
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

12 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 21, 25, 27, 28, 29, 61 and 10 more.

LOOP · 164 BPM
BAR 21 · LANDS ON BAR 22
LOOP · 164 BPM
BAR 25 · LANDS ON BAR 26
LOOP · 164 BPM
BARS 27-29 · LANDS ON BAR 30 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 164 BPM
BAR 61 · LANDS ON BAR 62 · PLAYED 2 TIMES

8 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

190 bars across 17 sections: 128 keep time, 16 are fills, 27 are stops and 2 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 4-20.

CHORUS
PART M
CHORUS 2
PART T
CHORUS 3
PART AC
CHORUS 4
PART AH
OUTRO 2
10 groovesEMAHART+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Rock and a Hard Place?

164 BPM, in 4/4, 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 Rock and a Hard Place hard to play on drums?

73 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 70 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

190 bars, about 4:31 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 57 exercises over 18 sittings, about 26 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 Rock and a Hard Place?

12 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 21, 25, 27, 28, 29, 61 and 10 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 190 BARS ANALYSED
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