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The Last Candle · Blind Guardian

EXERCISE 17 OF 46
Groove L -- Part L (a two-bar phrase)
205 / 229 BARS COVERED
0 / 46 PASSED · 8 BARS LIT · IN THE PART L
PART A
CHORUS
PART L
CHORUS 2
PART P
CHORUS 3
PART P
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesGPALFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 12
LAND · 12
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 5
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Last Candle on drums

229 bars at 182 BPM -- fast, and 5:02 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

75 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
182 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
229
LENGTH
5:02
DIFFICULTY
75/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-4, toms through bars 5-8, snare through bars 9-12 and hi-hat through bars 13-229.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-15, 19-25 and 27-33, and 19 more places -- 49.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    14
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x---x---x---|
SD |x---x---x---x---|
BD |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
The Last Candle -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

12 fills to learn, played 28 times: bars 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 22 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 33 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 -- G -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- P -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 6 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus 2 -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and Part L -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  6. Bars 31-55 -- 6 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. Bars 70-93 -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  8. Through Part P and the Chorus 3 -- 6 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  9. and 2 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Last Candle?

182 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 Last Candle hard to play on drums?

75 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 58 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

229 bars, about 5:02 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 33 exercises over 10 sittings, about 28 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 Last Candle?

12 fills to learn, played 28 times: bars 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 22 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 229 BARS ANALYSED