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Valhalla · Blind Guardian

EXERCISE 1 OF 51
Groove D -- Chorus
0 / 185 BARS COVERED
0 / 51 PASSED · 71 BARS LIT
PART A
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
CHORUS 4
PART L
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesDLAFP+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 9
FILL · 10
LAND · 10
RUN · 2
JOIN · 9
LINK · 5
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Valhalla on drums

185 bars at 172 BPM -- fast, and 4:18 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

89 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
172 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
4:18
DIFFICULTY
89/100

toms through bars 1-16 and hi-hat through bars 17-185.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-23, 25-31 and 41-47, and 12 more places -- 38.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    42
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |x---xx--x--x-x--|
Valhalla -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

10 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 16, 24, 32, 37, 38, 39 and 15 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 40 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 -- D -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- L -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 15 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and Part F -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  6. Bars 37-57 -- 8 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  7. Through Part L and the Chorus 3 -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  8. Bars 72-83 -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  9. and 5 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Valhalla?

172 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 Valhalla hard to play on drums?

89 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 71 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

185 bars, about 4:18 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 40 exercises over 13 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Valhalla?

10 fills to learn, played 21 times: bars 16, 24, 32, 37, 38, 39 and 15 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 185 BARS ANALYSED