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Tension · Avenged Sevenfold

EXERCISE 5 OF 30
3-bar fill at bar 46
95 / 137 BARS COVERED
0 / 30 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART H
CHORUS
PART H
OUTRO
BREAK
4 groovesDHS5BFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Tension on drums

137 bars, 8:21, at 70 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
70 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
137
LENGTH
8:21
DIFFICULTY
68/100

hi-hat through bars 1-8, snare through bars 9-24, hi-hat through bars 25-28, snare through bars 29-44, ride through bars 45-50 and toms through bars 51-52, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 9-15, 17-23 and 29-35, and 5 more places -- 43.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    9                                10
    1.......2.......3.......4....... 1.......2.......3.......4.......
CC |x-------x-------x-------x-------|x-------x-------x-------x-------|
SD |----------------x-----x---------|--x-------------x-------x-------|
BD |x-------x---x-x-----x-------x---|x-----x-----x-x---x-x-x---------|
Tension -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 4, 8, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 17 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 22 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, H -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  2. Bars 1-49 -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part B -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through Part B and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and Part H -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  6. Through Part H and the Outro -- 9 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 15 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Tension?

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

Is Tension hard to play on drums?

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 44 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

137 bars, about 8:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 7 sittings, about 28 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 Tension?

7 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 4, 8, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 17 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 137 BARS ANALYSED