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Sickman · Alice in Chains

EXERCISE 1 OF 44
Groove G -- Chorus
0 / 128 BARS COVERED
0 / 44 PASSED · 42 BARS LIT
PART C
CHORUS
PART C
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
PART C
OUTRO
5 groovesGCACAS6Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 10
FILL · 10
LAND · 10
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Sickman on drums

128 bars of 3/4 -- not four -- at 109 BPM, 3:56 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

83 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
109 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
128
LENGTH
3:56
DIFFICULTY
83/100

toms through bars 1-16, ride through bars 17-34, toms through bars 35-46, ride through bars 47-63, silence through bars 64-66 and ride through bars 67-91, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-21, 24-25 and 27, and 18 more places -- 33.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    20
    1...........2...........3...........
RD |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|
SD |------------------x-----------------|
BD |x-----------x-----------------x-----|
Sickman -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

10 fills to learn, played 18 times: bars 18, 26, 30, 32, 48, 56 and 12 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 33 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 -- 3 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and Part C -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through Part C -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
  5. Through Part C and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  6. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  7. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  8. Bars 30-49 -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  9. and 5 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Sickman?

109 BPM, in 3/4, with the time kept in thirty-second 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 Sickman hard to play on drums?

83 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 49 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

128 bars, about 3:56 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 33 exercises over 13 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, 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 Sickman?

10 fills to learn, played 18 times: bars 18, 26, 30, 32, 48, 56 and 12 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 128 BARS ANALYSED