Before i detail the journey, here is the final product:

The Journey

During October of 2017 i decided to finally learn Subdivisions by Rush. And i mean REALLY learn it. I first started playing along with this song as early as 1988, possibly 1987. While i used the book “Drum Techniques of Rush” early on to learn the drum parts, i never really bothered to learn the drum fills and instead just “winged it” for decades.

I started by transcribing the drum fills as notated in “Drum Techniques of Rush” and practiced just those fills over and over for a few days. I took Derek Roddy’s advice for learning a song and started playing along with Subdivisions 5 times in a row, nonstop. Here are 5 early attempts that show me trying to remember those fills while playing the song, if really are bored enough to watch. (Drums only)

And that’s when i began to notice that several fills were just not lining up with what i was hearing. Additionally, the keyboard melody section (dinga dinga ding ride part) was not jiving either. The parts in “Drum Techniques of Rush” showed no signs of ghost notes and even though it did have the correct time signature, something was way off.

So i switched my studies to “Taking Center Stage,” whose transcription for the song indeed is nearly 100% correct. I updated my cheat sheet and continued rehearsing the song 5 times in a row, nonstop (once per day, but twice on one particular day). Here are 5 more attempts that show me trying to remember the updated fills that i notated from “Taking Center Stage.” Again, drums only, boring stuff:

After about six or seven “5 times in a row” rehearsals i decided to switch gears and play along with the song slowed down to 66% of normal speed (roughly 88 beats per minute). Here is a version of this that was recorded just prior to the “final product:”

Finally, on October 29th i decided to “submit” the video you see at the very top of this post, the “final product” (i can do better ;)).