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About A Girl · Nirvana

EXERCISE 13 OF 30
Groove I (a two-bar phrase)
70 / 92 BARS COVERED
0 / 30 PASSED · 7 BARS LIT
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
PART H
CHORUS 4
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesCFHS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 9
LAND · 9
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play About A Girl on drums

92 bars of 4/4 at 129 BPM, about 2:50 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

65 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
129 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
92
LENGTH
2:50
DIFFICULTY
65/100

silence through bars 1-4, ride through bars 5-16, hi-hat through bars 17-22, ride through bars 23-34, hi-hat through bars 35-40 and ride through bars 41-52, and 7 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-7, 9-15 and 23-25, and 6 more places -- 50.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    6
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
RD |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-----x-x-----x-|
About A Girl -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

9 fills to learn, played 25 times: bars 4, 8, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 19 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 20 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 -- C -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. Bars 19-40 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  4. Bars 21-57 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 7 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is About A Girl?

129 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is About A Girl hard to play on drums?

65 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 39 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

92 bars, about 2:50 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 20 exercises over 6 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, 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 About A Girl?

9 fills to learn, played 25 times: bars 4, 8, 16, 18, 20, 22 and 19 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 92 BARS ANALYSED