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The Darkest Nights · As I Lay Dying

EXERCISE 20 OF 28
Join Part L to Chorus 3 (bars 56-58)
149 / 168 BARS COVERED
0 / 28 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART L, CHORUS 3
CHORUS
PART F
PART L
CHORUS 3
PART F
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesALFBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 6
LINK · 3
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Darkest Nights on drums

168 bars at 175 BPM -- fast, and 3:50 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
175 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
168
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
47/100

hi-hat through bars 1-16, kick and crashes through bars 17-20, snare through bars 21-36, hi-hat through bars 37-52, snare through bars 53-60 and hi-hat through bars 61-76, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-7, 9-15 and 37-39, and 14 more places -- 55.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    133
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x---x-x-x---x-|
The Darkest Nights -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 28, 48, 60, 76, 84, 104 and 4 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 23 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, B -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. Bars 12-24 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Through Part F and the Chorus 2 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus 2 and Part L -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus 2 and Part L -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Bars 54-101 -- 6 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  7. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 16 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Darkest Nights?

175 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 Darkest Nights hard to play on drums?

47 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?

168 bars, about 3:50 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 23 exercises over 7 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, 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 Darkest Nights?

4 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 28, 48, 60, 76, 84, 104 and 4 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 168 BARS ANALYSED