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Stay Away · Nirvana

EXERCISE 1 OF 26
Groove B -- Chorus 2 (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 131 BARS COVERED
0 / 26 PASSED · 55 BARS LIT
PART A
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
PART E
CHORUS 3
PART G
CHORUS 4
PART E
CHORUS 5
PART G
CHORUS 6
PART A
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesBAEGFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 2
JOIN · 6
LINK · 6
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Stay Away on drums

131 bars at 165 BPM -- fast, and 3:11 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
165 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
131
LENGTH
3:11
DIFFICULTY
70/100

snare through bars 1-10, hi-hat through bars 11-18, toms through bars 19-26, hi-hat through bars 27-34, toms through bars 35-42 and hi-hat through bars 43-52, and 14 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 11-17, 27-33 and 43-49, and 4 more places -- 42% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    11               12
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-------x-------|x---------------|
HH |----x-------x---|----x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|----x---x---x---|
BD |X-x---x-x-x---x-|x-x---x---x---x-|
Stay Away -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 50, 82, 128, 129, 130 and 131.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 23 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 -- B, A -- 3 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  2. Bars 7-18 -- 3 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  3. Through Part E and the Chorus 2 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus 3 and Part G -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Bars 54-123 -- 7 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Stay Away?

165 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 Stay Away hard to play on drums?

70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 38 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

131 bars, about 3:11 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 23 exercises over 6 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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 Stay Away?

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 50, 82, 128, 129, 130 and 131.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 131 BARS ANALYSED