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Beat It On Down The Line · Grateful Dead

EXERCISE 11 OF 23
Groove E -- Part E
110 / 114 BARS COVERED
0 / 23 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE PART E
CHORUS
PART D
PART E
CHORUS 4
OUTRO 2
5 groovesADCBEFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
RUN · 1
JOIN · 9
LINK · 2
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Beat It On Down The Line on drums

114 bars at 170 BPM -- fast, and 2:41 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

54 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
170 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
114
LENGTH
2:41
DIFFICULTY
54/100

hi-hat through bars 1-7, snare through bars 8-11, ride through bars 12-15, snare through bars 16-27, hi-hat through bars 28-31 and snare through bars 32-35, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-7, 28-31 and 36-39, and 2 more places -- 71.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    1
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-x-----|
Beat It On Down The Line -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 22 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 -- A -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  2. Through Part B and Part C -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Through Part C and Part D -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  4. Bars 30-36 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  5. Bars 36-76 -- 6 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Beat It On Down The Line?

170 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 Beat It On Down The Line hard to play on drums?

54 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 41 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

114 bars, about 2:41 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 6 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 114 BARS ANALYSED