← SONGS

touch the sky · Kanye West

EXERCISE 20 OF 20
Play the whole song with the record
113 / 133 BARS COVERED
0 / 20 PASSED · 133 BARS LIT
PART B
BREAK
PART B
BREAK 2
PART S5
PART J
BREAK 3
OUTRO
7 groovesRBS7JS5+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
RUN · 3
JOIN · 4
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play touch the sky on drums

133 bars of 4/4 at a walking 105 BPM, 5:04 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

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

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
133
LENGTH
5:04
DIFFICULTY
28/100

snare through bars 1-40, hi-hat through bars 41-55, silence through bars 56-75 and snare through bars 76-133.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 76-130 -- 49.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    77
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x---x-x-x---x-|
touch the sky -- 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 19 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 -- R, B -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  2. Through Part B -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. Bars 1-43 -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through Part S5 and Part J -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  5. Through Part J -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  6. Bars 44-133 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is touch the sky?

105 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is touch the sky hard to play on drums?

28 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 8 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

133 bars, about 5:04 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 7 sittings, about 22 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 133 BARS ANALYSED