← SONGS

Almost Cut My Hair · Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young

EXERCISE 1 OF 40
Groove E -- Chorus
0 / 74 BARS COVERED
0 / 40 PASSED · 19 BARS LIT
PART B
CHORUS
PART I
CHORUS 2
PART B
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesEBIFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 12
LAND · 12
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Almost Cut My Hair on drums

74 bars, 4:15, at 69 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
69 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
74
LENGTH
4:15
DIFFICULTY
42/100

toms through bar 1, ride through bars 2-5, hi-hat through bars 6-17, ride through bars 18-21, hi-hat through bars 22-25 and ride through bars 26-27, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6, 8 and 10, and 16 more places -- 25.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    6
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |--x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Almost Cut My Hair -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

12 fills to learn, played 19 times: bars 5, 13, 18, 19, 25, 31 and 13 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 27 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, B -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- I -- 4 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus and Part I -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through Part I and the Chorus 2 -- 6 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus 2 -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  6. Bars 42-56 -- 9 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 24 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Almost Cut My Hair?

69 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 Almost Cut My Hair hard to play on drums?

42 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 21 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

74 bars, about 4:15 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 27 exercises over 7 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor 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 Almost Cut My Hair?

12 fills to learn, played 19 times: bars 5, 13, 18, 19, 25, 31 and 13 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 74 BARS ANALYSED