She Sells Sanctuary by the Cult is now part of the Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 2 Drums syllabus. Here’s my attempt at it:
Let’s Rock!
This is a fairly straight ahead rock song, the key thing in performing this song is to get the feel correct. It’s time to hit hard. The bass and snare want to provide a solid, steady, unrelenting groove throughout the song. The dynamic for this song only slips below forte (loud) for the breakdown section of the song.
This is a good song to practice playing heel up on the bass drum; it’ll help to get more weight into your groove. Switch to heel down during the quieter breakdown section to help control your dynamics.
Hopefully you’ve been playing your basic rock beats with a metronome and can absolutely nail this song. There isn’t too much about this song that is challenging, but you need to really commit to the beat & make it rock.
Hard Hitting Hats
To help drive a song forward & make the groove feel heavier and rock solid, rock drummers often accent the quarter note pulse on the hi-hat whilst playing eighth notes. This is achieved by using a whipping motion to generate the strokes that play the downbeats (1,2,3,4) and then hitting the upbeat strokes (the “&s”) as you reset the motion for the next downbeat.
Watch powerful rock drummers such as Phil Rudd (AC/DC), Matt Sorum (Guns n’ Roses, The Cult, Velvet Revolver), Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) or Tico Torres (Bon Jovi) and observe the motion of their arms; you’ll see all of them accenting the quarter note down beat in this manner. Try and copy their arm motion and you should hear more dynamics in your hi-hat playing that’ll help to solidify the pulse of the song and power it forward.
Flams & Fills
The song, like many a great rock song, starts with a flam. It’s a strong statement to make at the start of a song and tells the listener it’s time to rock. Make sure you really nail the timing and get it perfectly on beat four to give a secure & powerful start to the song.
All the fills in the song are performed solely on the snare drum. As a rock drummer I’ve always loved snare drum fills, they have an aggression to them that you can’t get through hitting tom toms. They may be simple to play and don’t look so flashy, but musically they really make an impact.
The big fill at bar 48 – the end of the breakdown section – is a classic rock fill that you want to have in your vocabulary. It’s been featured in songs by AC/DC, Bon Jovi, Meatloaf, Queen, Poison, Guns n’Roses and countless others. Flams are used again to make it more powerful and to make more of a statement, focus on getting all 3 flams sounding the same.
Did You Find Sanctuary?
Hopefully you enjoy yourself rocking out to this track, it’s one of the simpler songs to play on the grade 2 syllabus, but it’s needs commitment to making the beat feel as good as possible & providing a solid back bone for the rest of the band to sit on.
The 2018 version of the Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 2 Drums book is great to work through if you’re around 6 months to a year into your drumming career. You don’t have to take the exam to benefit from the book. The songs are great to work on & fun to play and will help to improve your drumming. In Singapore you can find the book at Robert Piano – Paragon Shopping Centre (and probably their other outlets). It’s also available from Amazon if you’re happy to pay the shipping!
Check out other Trinity Rock & Pop Grade 2 songs such as:
Under The Bridge – Red Hot Chili Peppers
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If you’re in Singapore & haven’t had a free trial drum lesson with us, contact us & we’ll arrange one for you.