Serpents better · Sharon Van Etten

90 bars of 4/4 at 122 BPM, about 2:57 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO

122 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

90

LENGTH

2:57

DIFFICULTY

44/100

silence through bars 1-8, snare through bars 9-15, hi-hat through bars 16-85 and snare through bars 86-90.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 36-40, 51-60 and 71-73, and 1 more place -- 28% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    37
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o-o-----o-o-o-o-|
SD |----xxxx----x---|
BD |x-x-----x-x---x-|

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 41, 49, 68, 74, 80 and 83.

It cuts the song into 27 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 -- E, C -- 3 exercises, about 31 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- D -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
3. Bars 16-36 -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes.
4. Through the Chorus and Part C -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
5. Through Part C and the Chorus 2 -- 8 exercises, about 34 minutes. Open above.
6. Through the Chorus 3 and the Outro -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
7. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 3 exercises, about 21 minutes.
8. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.