EDS Songbook Level One Darkened Streets – Nu metal
EDS Songbook Level One Darkened Streets – Nu metal
Download and print out the score, so that you can refer to it as you follow the keyboard chart.
Start by going through the chart, step by step, looking at each section and understanding what the chart is asking you to do.
The first thing you will see is the name of the tune, ‘Darkened Streets’, and the name of the composer. The title is the important one as, if you had a number of songs to play, it is essential that you play the correct one!
At the top left hand side, before the tune starts, you will see the note '4 Clicks'. This means that you will hear four clicks before the tune starts. This will help count you into the song.
Next is the time signature ‘C’, which is the sign for ‘common time’ and means there are four beats in each bar. This is familiar territory for you.
Above the first bar is the name of the first section of the song, which is the ‘Introduction’. The Introduction is four bars long. You will see that you simply play quarter notes, on the hi-hat, whilst the guitar plays the opening introduction riff for the song. On the fourth bar you play a simple fill – by playing the snare drum on beat ‘4’ and the bass drum on the ‘+’ of ‘4’. This provides a simple pickup into the first Chorus.
The first Chorus begins with a crash cymbal on beat 1 of the groove. This is a straight forward quarter note rock groove. The bass drum pattern varies quite a bit, and you will need to spend a little time developing the ability to vary the rock grooves. Look at each bar and practise the coordination required. These grooves are difficult, as they all contain quarter note ride lines. As such, they require a great deal of independent coordination. Go back to Lesson 2 to revise if necessary.
The twelfth bar of the Chorus (bar 16) has a slightly different ending, as it leaves the snare drum on beat 4 out of the groove. This variation has the effect of calming the Chorus before it moves into the Verse, bringing the dynamic down slightly.
The Verse is a slightly more straight forward groove, with most of the bars having a typical backbeat groove. If you look carefully at the structure, you can see that every fourth bar has an extra bass drum note on the ‘+’ of ‘4’. This creates a sense of urgency to the pattern.
There are sixteen bars in the Verse. The last bar has a simple fill that highlights the dynamic change of the piece, as you move from the Verse into the Chorus.
The Chorus is sixteen bars long and finishes with a fill. The fill is quite simple in rhythmic terms, but it is played on different drums compared to the standard fill around the kit. The fill starts on the hi-tom and finishes on a single hi-hat note. This has the effect of bringing the dynamic down a little as the song goes back into the Verse.
The next Verse is the same as Verse 1, and is followed by a further Chorus — which is three times round the eight bar riff. There are twenty-four bars in total, so count carefully. The last bar is a simple fill which finishes on beat 3. This is new, as you have only played whole bar fills so far. However, just practise playing and counting the three beat fill a few times, and you will find it quite straight forward. Shorter fills will be studied in detail in Level 2.
Once you have played the last bar, you can see that the song is finished. It has the term ‘Fine’ at the end which, you know, means ‘end’.
Now, watch and listen to the multimedia files, and follow the drum chart through a couple of times.
Once you have done that, have a go yourself. You can play with the drums, or mute the drummer on the track so that you can play on your own. Remember to: