ヨルシカ / Yorushika - カトレア / cattleya Practice Log
Sharing my brutal practice journey on ヨルシカ (Yorushika)〈カトレア / Cattleya〉 XDD.
This song is really tough — I practiced it for quite a while before finishing.It’s not only fast and difficult, it’s full of fills and passages, making it a real challenge for me.
But finishing it felt especially rewarding!
Before diving into the song, I warm up as usual. The song’s BPM is 160,
so I warm up with 16th-note patterns, at least up to about BPM 170.
When my hands get used to a slightly faster speed than the original, returning to BPM 160 feels much more stable.
Also, the song uses many “missing-2” syncopations, so I add similar phrases to my warm-up,
moving my hands to the Hi-Hat so I’m familiar with the rhythms I’ll face later.
Warm-up complete — into the song! The intro starts with a missing-2 Hi-Hat groove,
but the bass drum doesn’t land on every beat, so at first my hands and feet interfered with each other.
I slowed the tempo, looped the first four bars until they were solid,
then gradually raised the BPM. Since similar patterns repeat later,
nailing the start made the rest easier to follow.
Next came the part where my hands started burning XD. The 16th-note beat at BPM 160
really tests your consistency on rudiments. When I couldn’t keep up,
I usually dropped 20 BPM to get the motions smooth, then gradually brought the speed back up.
Right after that there’s a double bass section; I play it with a “back-front” foot motion, using two consecutive foot strokes to get the quick double.
When my feet weren’t used to it, I isolated that motion and repeated it slowly until the double was stable, then sped up.
At bars 16–17 of the intro there’s another fill. This section has lots of part shifts between drums,
so it was a great phrase to drill those shifts.
The verse is more forgiving — finally a breath XD.
Then comes the song’s key chorus groove, packed with limb independence;
when every limb locks in and you play it through, it feels amazing!
Next is the fill at bars 45–46.
I like the hand-foot coordination here — the crucial point is the fourth bass-drum placement.
This rhythm not only sounds great but appears in many songs, so I isolated and repeated it a lot.
Then bars 49–50: an endless-sounding fill. (sweat)
After finally getting through it, we return to an easier verse and my hands get a short rest XD.
Around bars 65–66 there’s a pre-chorus fill.
This section has many shifts between snare, T1 and FT. When it felt messy, I’d isolate the phrase and repeat it
until my hands memorized the shift sequence, then reattach it to the song.
The second chorus is similar to the first. If the earlier parts are solid, this one goes through more easily;
if I get stuck, I go back and run the previous phrases a few times. Then comes the bridge.
This section originally uses rim shots, but GONGO doesn’t have rim sounds yet, so I temporarily used snare instead (will add rim later)
The tricky part here is switching suddenly from rim to FT, then to CYM, followed by a “1, 4+3” syncopated choke cymbal.
I drilled this phrase many times until my left foot could naturally control the Hi-Hat open/close, then slowly reattached the whole section.
To describe the choke motion: as the right hand and right foot strike,
the left foot slightly opens the Hi-Hat then immediately closes it, creating a short, instant open-close sound.
Getting three limbs to move together in the exact spot cost me a lot of time. (sweat)
Next is the two-bar fill before section C.
After practicing this, the following rhythms and fills mostly reuse phrases from earlier.
The material I broke down earlier finally pays off! By this point your hands should have most of it memorized, right? XD
Overall, 〈カトレア〉 is fast, fill-heavy, and really tests single strokes, syncopation, shifting, and limb coordination.
Although the practice grind was painful, playing the full song is intense and thrilling.
When a section that used to trip you up finally flows, you realize all the practice was worth it!
If you like this song, try challenging it too! 🥁