The Serpentine Offering · Dimmu Borgir

162 bars of 4/4 at a walking 100 BPM, 6:43 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO

100 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

162

LENGTH

6:43

DIFFICULTY

69/100

toms through bars 1-4, snare through bars 5-20, hi-hat through bars 21-34, ride through bars 35-36, hi-hat through bars 37-53 and snare through bars 54-62, and 11 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-28 and 75-76 -- 6.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    21
    1...............2...............3...............4...............
CC |x---------------------------------------------------------------|
HH |--------o-------o-------o-------o-------o-------o-------o-------|
SD |----------------x-------------------------------x---------------|
BD |x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--x--x-x--|

17 fills to learn, played 31 times: bars 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 25 more.

It cuts the song into 81 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 -- M -- 1 exercise, about 20 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- W, AL -- 2 exercises, about 24 minutes.
3. Bars 1-55 -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
4. Through Part D and Part H -- 2 exercises, about 17 minutes.
5. Through Part H and Part M -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
6. Bars 8-24 -- 4 exercises, about 19 minutes.
7. Through Part N -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
8. Through Part M and Part N -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
9. and 17 more sittings after that.