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Wild West End · Dire Straits

EXERCISE 17 OF 29
Groove P -- Verse
55 / 77 BARS COVERED
0 / 29 PASSED · 8 BARS LIT · IN THE VERSE
CHORUS
PART B
PART K
PART I
VERSE
OUTRO
6 groovesPCKIB+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 3
JOIN · 5
LINK · 1
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Wild West End on drums

77 bars, 4:34, at 67 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

TEMPO
67 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
77
LENGTH
4:34
DIFFICULTY
69/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-48, ride through bars 49-55, hi-hat through bars 56-64 and ride through bars 65-77.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25, 27 and 29, and 10 more places -- 17.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    27
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxo-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x------xx-----x-|
Wild West End -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 40, 48, 54, 55, 56 and 64.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 24 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 -- H, I -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 3 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  3. Bars 4-72 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Bars 26-45 -- 6 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  5. Through the Verse -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  6. Bars 44-74 -- 8 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Wild West End?

67 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Wild West End hard to play on drums?

69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat. The beat itself is 42 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

77 bars, about 4:34 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 24 exercises over 7 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Wild West End?

4 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 40, 48, 54, 55, 56 and 64.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 77 BARS ANALYSED