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The Bad Thing · Arctic Monkeys

EXERCISE 18 OF 24
Groove N
53 / 65 BARS COVERED
0 / 24 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE PART K, OUTRO
CHORUS
PART S2
PART D
PART F
CHORUS 2
PART K
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesAKFDS2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
LINK · 1
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Bad Thing on drums

65 bars of 4/4 at 111 BPM, about 2:21 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
111 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
65
LENGTH
2:21
DIFFICULTY
66/100

ride through bars 1-9, silence through bars 10-12, snare through bars 13-16, toms through bars 17-20, ride through bars 21-28 and hi-hat through bars 29-44, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-3, 5-8 and 21-25, and 3 more places -- 33.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    2
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
RD |x-xxx-xxx-xxx-xx|
SD |--x---xx--x---xx|
BD |x----x--x----x--|
The Bad Thing -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 4, 20, 26, 27, 28, 32 and 8 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 19 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 -- A -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- K -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 13-32 -- 7 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  5. Through Part K and the Outro -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  6. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 16 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Bad Thing?

111 BPM, in 4/4, 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 The Bad Thing hard to play on drums?

66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 62 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

65 bars, about 2:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 6 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high 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 The Bad Thing?

4 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 4, 20, 26, 27, 28, 32 and 8 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 65 BARS ANALYSED