← SONGS

Better Man · Taylor Swift

EXERCISE 1 OF 27
Groove B -- Chorus
0 / 68 BARS COVERED
0 / 27 PASSED · 18 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
PART C
PART D
CHORUS
PART C
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesBDCS6S1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 7
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
LINK · 1
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Better Man on drums

68 bars, 3:41, at 74 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
74 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
68
LENGTH
3:41
DIFFICULTY
52/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-38, silence through bars 39-47, hi-hat through bars 48-63 and kick and crashes through bars 64-68.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5, 13 and 15, and 8 more places -- 31.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    24
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Better Man -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 16, 21, 29, 46, 47, 49 and 3 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 -- B, C -- 2 exercises, about 21 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- D -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  3. Through Part D -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Bars 30-49 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  8. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 9 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Better Man?

74 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 Better Man hard to play on drums?

52 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 20 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

68 bars, about 3:41 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 8 sittings, about 22 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 Better Man?

4 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 16, 21, 29, 46, 47, 49 and 3 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 68 BARS ANALYSED