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Alabama · Neil Young with The Stray Gators

Alabama · Neil Young with The Stray Gators
EXERCISE 22 OF 33
Run M1 · Part M (bars 43-51)
64 / 72 BARS COVERED
0 / 33 PASSED · 9 BARS LIT · IN THE PART M
PART C
CHORUS
PART C
CHORUS 2
PART M
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesECMS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 2
JOIN · 4
LINK · 4
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Alabama on drums

72 bars, 3:50, at 75 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
75 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
72
LENGTH
3:50
DIFFICULTY
44/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-12, snare through bars 13-19, ride through bars 20-24, hi-hat through bars 25-30 and snare through bars 31-42, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-15, 17-18 and 22, and 8 more places -- 34.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    13
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x-----x-x-----|
Alabama -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 16, 19, 20, 23, 34, 38 and 8 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 25 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 -- E, C -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  2. Through the Chorus and Part C -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Bars 18-35 -- 7 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus 2 and Part M -- 4 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  5. Bars 43-69 -- 8 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  6. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 19 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Alabama?

75 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 Alabama hard to play on drums?

44 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 26 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

72 bars, about 3:50 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 25 exercises over 6 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Alabama?

7 fills to learn, played 14 times: bars 16, 19, 20, 23, 34, 38 and 8 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 72 BARS ANALYSED