← SONGS

The Battle of the Five Armies · Wind Rose

EXERCISE 1 OF 67
Groove H -- Chorus (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 318 BARS COVERED
0 / 67 PASSED · 59 BARS LIT
PART A
CHORUS
PART J
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
CHORUS 4
PART X
PART AA
OUTRO 2
12 groovesHXQAAJ+7Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 15
FILL · 8
LAND · 8
RUN · 1
JOIN · 14
LINK · 10
SECTION · 10
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Battle of the Five Armies on drums

318 bars at 185 BPM -- fast, and 6:52 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
185 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
318
LENGTH
6:52
DIFFICULTY
60/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-16, hi-hat through bars 17-24, ride through bars 25-32, snare through bars 33-48, hi-hat through bars 49-64 and snare through bars 65-78, and 21 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 33-48, 65-67 and 69-70, and 8 more places -- 18.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    33               34
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---x---x---x---|x---x---x---x---|
SD |--------x-------|--------x-----x-|
BD |xxxxxxxx----xxxx|xxxxx-----xxx---|
The Battle of the Five Armies -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

8 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 15, 16, 24, 32, 52, 60 and 15 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 58 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, X -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- Q -- 1 exercise, about 13 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and Part D -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Bars 13-26 -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. Bars 21-36 -- 8 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  6. Through the Chorus and Part J -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  7. Through the Chorus and Part J -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  8. Through Part J and the Chorus 2 -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  9. and 9 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Battle of the Five Armies?

185 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 Battle of the Five Armies hard to play on drums?

60 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 47 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

318 bars, about 6:52 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 58 exercises over 17 sittings, about 25 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 The Battle of the Five Armies?

8 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 15, 16, 24, 32, 52, 60 and 15 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 318 BARS ANALYSED