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The Trooper · Iron Maiden

EXERCISE 10 OF 51
Groove J
78 / 169 BARS COVERED
0 / 51 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 2
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
PART AH
PART AI
PART V
PART S
OUTRO 2
13 groovesFSVAAH+8Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 17
RUN · 3
JOIN · 14
LINK · 6
SECTION · 10
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Trooper on drums

169 bars at 162 BPM -- fast, and 4:10 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
162 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
169
LENGTH
4:10
DIFFICULTY
68/100

snare through bars 1-5, toms through bars 6-8, ride through bars 9-165 and toms through bars 166-169.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 12, 14 and 18, and 16 more places -- 11.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    38
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |--------------x-|
RD |x---x-x-x-x-----|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-xx----x-x---x-|
HF |x---x---x---x---|
The Trooper -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 50 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 -- I, S -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- V -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 2 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  5. Bars 6-29 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  6. Bars 37-65 -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  7. Bars 32-47 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  8. Bars 42-57 -- 4 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  9. and 8 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Trooper?

162 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 Trooper hard to play on drums?

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 51 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

169 bars, about 4:10 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 50 exercises over 16 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 169 BARS ANALYSED