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Step Down · Sick Of It All

EXERCISE 10 OF 39
Run D1 · Part D (bars 8-22)
91 / 121 BARS COVERED
0 / 39 PASSED · 15 BARS LIT · IN THE PART D
PART A
PART D
PART A
PART D
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesFDASGFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 10
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 3
JOIN · 7
LINK · 5
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Step Down on drums

121 bars at 180 BPM -- fast, and 2:40 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
121
LENGTH
2:40
DIFFICULTY
52/100

toms through bars 1-6, snare through bars 7-8, hi-hat through bars 9-23, snare through bars 24-30, toms through bars 31-41 and snare through bars 42-43, and 9 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 22, 24-27 and 51, and 17 more places -- 33.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    85
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |--x-----x-x---x-|
Step Down -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 5 times: bars 31, 35, 40, 41 and 102.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 34 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 -- F, D -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- A -- 4 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. Through Part D -- 3 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  4. Bars 8-28 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  5. Bars 26-42 -- 7 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Bars 32-65 -- 4 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  7. Through the Chorus 2 -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  8. Through the Chorus 2 and Part A -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  9. and 2 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Step Down?

180 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 Step Down hard to play on drums?

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 31 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

121 bars, about 2:40 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 34 exercises over 10 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, 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 Step Down?

4 fills to learn, played 5 times: bars 31, 35, 40, 41 and 102.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 121 BARS ANALYSED