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Sign of the Times · Harry Styles

EXERCISE 22 OF 41
Fill at bar 33 (a small one)
41 / 66 BARS COVERED
0 / 41 PASSED · 1 BAR LIT · IN THE OUTRO
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesDGS1S2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 14
LAND · 14
JOIN · 3
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Sign of the Times on drums

66 bars, 4:24, at 60 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
60 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
66
LENGTH
4:24
DIFFICULTY
42/100

silence through bars 1-6, ride through bars 7-10, hi-hat through bars 11-32 and ride through bars 33-66.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 7-8, 10 and 26, and 7 more places -- 25.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-----------x---|
RD |--x-x-x-x-x---x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-x-----|
Sign of the Times -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

14 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29 and 16 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 26 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 -- D, G -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus and the Outro -- 10 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  4. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  5. Through the Outro 2 -- 6 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro 2 -- 6 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Sign of the Times?

60 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Sign of the Times hard to play on drums?

42 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 20 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

66 bars, about 4:24 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 26 exercises over 7 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, 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 Sign of the Times?

14 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 5, 9, 13, 17, 21, 29 and 16 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 66 BARS ANALYSED