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The Ballad · Testament

EXERCISE 1 OF 23
Groove H -- Chorus
0 / 176 BARS COVERED
0 / 23 PASSED · 60 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS
PART C
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesHICAS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 2
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Ballad on drums

176 bars, 11:42, at 60 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
60 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
176
LENGTH
11:42
DIFFICULTY
58/100

silence through bars 1-5, hi-hat through bars 6-69, kick and crashes through bars 70-71, hi-hat through bars 72-85, snare through bars 86-87 and hi-hat through bars 88-101, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 48-53, 56-62 and 64-69, and 4 more places -- 34.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    57
    1.......2.......3.......4.......
HH |o-------o-------o-------o-------|
SD |--------x---------------x-------|
BD |x-------------------x-----------|
The Ballad -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 15 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 18 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 -- H, I -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  2. Bars 6-124 -- 3 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  3. Through Part C -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  4. Through Part C and the Chorus -- 7 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  5. Bars 47-176 -- 6 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Ballad?

60 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 The Ballad hard to play on drums?

58 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 34 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

176 bars, about 11:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 18 exercises over 6 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 The Ballad?

4 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44 and 15 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 176 BARS ANALYSED