We Might as Well Be Strangers · Weezer

97 bars of 4/4 at 111 BPM, about 3:30 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how often it moves around the kit.

TEMPO

111 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

97

LENGTH

3:30

DIFFICULTY

52/100

silence through bars 1-5, snare through bars 6-9, hi-hat through bars 10-21, ride through bars 22-35, toms through bars 36-37 and hi-hat through bars 38-49, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 23, 25-31 and 33-35, and 7 more places -- 31.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    25               26
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |----------------|x-------------x-|
RD |x-g-x-g-x-g-x-g-|--g-x-g-x-g-x---|
SD |----x-------x--g|----x--g----x---|
BD |--x-----x-x-----|x-x-----x-x---x-|
HF |x---x---x---x---|x---x---x---x---|

5 fills to learn, played 10 times: bars 48, 49, 64, 65, 76, 77 and 4 more.

It cuts the song into 30 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 -- G, D -- 3 exercises, about 31 minutes. Open above.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
3. Bars 6-21 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
4. Through the Chorus and Part D -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
5. Through Part D and the Chorus 2 -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes.
6. Through the Chorus 2 -- 3 exercises, about 21 minutes.
7. Through the Chorus 2 and the Break 2 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
8. Bars 82-88 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
9. and 1 more sittings after that.