The Background · Third Eye Blind

163 bars at 159 BPM -- fast, and 4:06 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

Alternative / IndieRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
159 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
163
LENGTH
4:06
DIFFICULTY
50/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 27% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-20, 22-23 and 26-30, and 16 more places -- 27.2% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 159 BPM
THE BACKGROUND · BAR 18
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

8 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 56, 72, 76, 84, 100, 116 and 7 more.

LOOP · 159 BPM
BAR 56 · LANDS ON BAR 57 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 159 BPM
BAR 76 · LANDS ON BAR 77
LOOP · 159 BPM
BAR 84 · LANDS ON BAR 85 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 159 BPM
BAR 128 · LANDS ON BAR 129

4 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

163 bars across 11 sections: 95 keep time, 13 are fills, 29 are stops and 16 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 17-34.

COUNT-IN
CHORUS
PART D
CHORUS 2
PART J
CHORUS 3
PART P
OUTRO
7 groovesCJDS1P+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is The Background?

159 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 The Background hard to play on drums?

50 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 32 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

163 bars, about 4:06 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 40 exercises over 10 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, 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 The Background?

8 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 56, 72, 76, 84, 100, 116 and 7 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 163 BARS ANALYSED
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