← SONGS

21 Guns (Drum) · Green Day

EXERCISE 8 OF 24
Groove H
66 / 96 BARS COVERED
0 / 24 PASSED · 6 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B, CHORUS 2, OUTRO
PART B
CHORUS
PART B
CHORUS 2
BREAK
OUTRO
4 groovesGBS6S1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 3
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play 21 Guns (Drum) on drums

96 bars, 5:29, at 70 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
70 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
96
LENGTH
5:29
DIFFICULTY
39/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-11, toms through bars 12-14, snare through bars 15-16, toms through bars 17-18 and snare through bars 19-22, and 16 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15, 19-20 and 41, and 9 more places -- 32.5% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    15
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x-----x-x-----|
21 Guns (Drum) -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 12, 48, 52 and 56.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 19 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 -- G, B -- 2 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- E (a two-bar phrase) -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Through Part B and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes. Open above.
  4. Bars 19-49 -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is 21 Guns (Drum)?

70 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 21 Guns (Drum) hard to play on drums?

39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 16 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

96 bars, about 5:29 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 5 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 21 Guns (Drum)?

4 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 12, 48, 52 and 56.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 96 BARS ANALYSED