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Scratch The Surface · Sick Of It All

EXERCISE 26 OF 39
Groove N -- Part N (a two-bar phrase)
100 / 112 BARS COVERED
0 / 39 PASSED · 6 BARS LIT · IN THE PART N
PART A
PART D
CHORUS
PART L
PART D
CHORUS 2
PART L
PART N
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesGDLAK+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 10
FILL · 6
LAND · 6
RUN · 3
JOIN · 7
LINK · 1
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Scratch The Surface on drums

112 bars at 174 BPM -- fast, and 2:33 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
174 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
2:33
DIFFICULTY
45/100

toms through bars 1-8, snare through bars 9-16, toms through bars 17-24, snare through bars 25-28, toms through bars 29-36 and hi-hat through bars 37-44, and 8 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 17-23, 29-35 and 57-63, and 1 more place -- 25% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    17               18
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
SD |--------x-------|--------x---x---|
FT |x-xxx-x-x-x-x-x-|x-xxx-x---------|
BD |x---x-------x---|x---x-----x---x-|
Scratch The Surface -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

6 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 8, 12, 24, 36, 52, 64 and 4 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 32 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 -- G, D -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- K -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and Part D -- 7 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  4. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 8 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and Part L -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Bars 44-88 -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  7. Bars 87-97 -- 6 exercises, about 35 minutes. Open above.
  8. Bars 93-106 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  9. and 1 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Scratch The Surface?

174 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 Scratch The Surface hard to play on drums?

45 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 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

112 bars, about 2:33 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 32 exercises over 9 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Scratch The Surface?

6 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 8, 12, 24, 36, 52, 64 and 4 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 112 BARS ANALYSED