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Big Yellow Taxi · Counting Crows

EXERCISE 15 OF 19
Run D2 · Part D (bars 51-54)
78 / 83 BARS COVERED
0 / 19 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE PART D
CHORUS
PART D
PART S5
PART D
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCDS5KS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Big Yellow Taxi on drums

83 bars of 4/4 at a walking 88 BPM, 3:43 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat.

TEMPO
88 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
83
LENGTH
3:43
DIFFICULTY
52/100

hi-hat through bars 2-9, snare through bars 10-34, hi-hat through bars 35-37, snare through bars 38-42, silence through bars 43-47 and kick and crashes through bars 48-50, and 5 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-7, 11-14 and 16, and 17 more places -- 39% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    14
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x--x--x---x--x-x|
HF |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
Big Yellow Taxi -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 41.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 17 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, D -- 2 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  2. Through the Chorus and Part D -- 5 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  3. Bars 35-51 -- 7 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 51-80 -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  5. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Big Yellow Taxi?

88 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth 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 Big Yellow Taxi hard to play on drums?

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat. The beat itself is 33 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

83 bars, about 3:43 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 5 sittings, about 26 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 Big Yellow Taxi?

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 41.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 83 BARS ANALYSED