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Thinking Out Loud · Ed Sheeran

EXERCISE 5 OF 6
Run A1 · Outro 2 (bars 171-176)
154 / 176 BARS COVERED
0 / 6 PASSED · 6 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO 2
COUNT-IN
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesBS1AFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
RUN · 1
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Thinking Out Loud on drums

176 bars at 158 BPM -- fast, and 4:27 of it without a break -- on ride, hi-hat, snare and kick.

30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
158 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
176
LENGTH
4:27
DIFFICULTY
30/100

silence through bars 1-16, hi-hat through bars 17-46, kick and crashes through bars 47-48, hi-hat through bars 49-64, kick and crashes through bars 65-68 and hi-hat through bars 69-114, and 7 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 17-46, 49-64 and 69-114, and 3 more places -- 85.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    17               18
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |----x-----------|x-----------x---|
SD |--------x-------|--------x-------|
BD |x-----------x---|----x-----------|
Thinking Out Loud -- 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 5 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 -- B -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Thinking Out Loud?

158 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 Thinking Out Loud hard to play on drums?

30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 19 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

176 bars, about 4:27 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 5 exercises over 2 sittings, about 21 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

ride, hi-hat, snare and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 176 BARS ANALYSED