← SONGS

American Girl · Clarion

EXERCISE 1 OF 45
Groove G
0 / 150 BARS COVERED
0 / 45 PASSED · 24 BARS LIT
CHORUS
PART K
PART P
CHORUS 2
PART K
PART T
PART P
PART P
PART O
OUTRO
10 groovesEKPOT+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 15
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 3
JOIN · 9
LINK · 6
SECTION · 7
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play American Girl on drums

150 bars at 200 BPM -- fast, and 3:00 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
200 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
150
LENGTH
3:00
DIFFICULTY
78/100

snare through bars 3-6, hi-hat through bars 7-102, silence through bars 103-110, hi-hat through bars 111-134, snare through bars 135-139 and kick and crashes through bars 140-143, and 1 more change after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13, 21 and 37, and 20 more places -- 17.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    41
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |----o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |----X-------X---|
BD |--x-----x-x-----|
American Girl -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 4, 130 and 140.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 42 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, K -- 3 exercises, about 34 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- O -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
  6. Through the Chorus -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  7. Through the Chorus -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  8. Through Part K -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
  9. and 9 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is American Girl?

200 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is American Girl hard to play on drums?

78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 40 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

150 bars, about 3:00 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 42 exercises over 17 sittings, about 22 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 American Girl?

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 4, 130 and 140.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 150 BARS ANALYSED