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Beck's Bolero · Jeff Beck

EXERCISE 14 OF 28
Groove I
76 / 98 BARS COVERED
0 / 28 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO
PART C
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesDECHFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
FILL · 5
LAND · 5
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 3
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Beck's Bolero on drums

98 bars of 4/4 at 133 BPM, about 2:57 of playing, on crash, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
133 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
2:57
DIFFICULTY
66/100

toms through bars 1-2, snare through bars 3-22, toms through bars 23-32, snare through bars 33-95 and toms through bars 96-98.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-22, 34 and 36, and 8 more places -- 30.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    3
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
SD |x-----------x---x---x---x-----------x---x---x---|
BD |x-----------x-----------x-----------x-----------|
Beck's Bolero -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

5 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 54, 70, 78, 82, 96, 97 and 1 more.

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 -- C -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- E, D -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Through Part C and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and the Outro -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  5. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes. Open above.
  6. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. Through the Outro 2 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  8. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Beck's Bolero?

133 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second 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 Beck's Bolero hard to play on drums?

66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 43 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

98 bars, about 2:57 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 8 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, snare, high tom, 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 Beck's Bolero?

5 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 54, 70, 78, 82, 96, 97 and 1 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 98 BARS ANALYSED