Thick And Thin · Avenged Sevenfold

191 bars at 176 BPM -- fast, and 4:20 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO

176 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

191

LENGTH

4:20

DIFFICULTY

69/100

hi-hat through bars 1-22, snare through bars 23-30, ride through bars 31-35, snare through bars 36-37, hi-hat through bars 38-49 and toms through bars 50-51, and 16 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-39, 41-43 and 45-47, and 5 more places -- 12.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    38
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
CC |x-----------------------x-----------------------|
HH |------------------------------------o-----------|
SD |------------------------x-----------------------|
FT |------------x-----------------------------------|
BD |x-----x-----------x-----x-----------x--x--x--x--|

12 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 16, 28, 35, 48, 60, 69 and 11 more.

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 -- I -- 1 exercise, about 15 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- N -- 5 exercises, about 34 minutes.
4. Through Part C -- 3 exercises, about 12 minutes.
5. Through Part C and Part F -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
6. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
7. Bars 37-78 -- 6 exercises, about 37 minutes.
8. Through Part N -- 1 exercise, about 15 minutes.
9. and 11 more sittings after that.