ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Starless on drums

103 bars of 6/4 -- not four -- at 135 BPM, 4:30 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO: 135 BPM
TIME: 6/4
BARS: 103
LENGTH: 4:30
DIFFICULTY: 40/100

toms through bars 1-25, hi-hat through bars 26-33, ride through bars 34-39, toms through bars 40-41, silence through bars 42-45 and hi-hat through bars 46-61, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 18-20, 26 and 30-32 -- 10.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    18                       19
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a
CC |x-----------------------|x---x---x---x---x---x---|
HH |----o---o---o---o---o---|------------------------|
SD |--------x---------x-----|--------x-------x-------|
T2 |----------x-----------x-|----------x-------------|
FT |------------------------|--------------------x---|
BD |x---x-x-------x---------|x---x-x-------x---x-----|

Starless -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

8 fills to learn, played 41 times: bars 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11 and 35 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.

The grooves the song is built on -- P, Y -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
The grooves the song is built on -- AE -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
Bars 1-54 -- 5 exercises, about 24 minutes.
Through Part R and Part P -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
Through the Chorus and Part R -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
Bars 28-42 -- 6 exercises, about 27 minutes.
Bars 46-71 -- 6 exercises, about 29 minutes.
The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.

START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Starless?

135 BPM, in 6/4, with the time kept in sixteenth 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 Starless hard to play on drums?

40 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 35 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

103 bars, about 4:30 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 26 exercises over 8 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, 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 Starless?

8 fills to learn, played 41 times: bars 1, 2, 3, 4, 10, 11 and 35 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 103 BARS ANALYSED