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Borderline · Madonna

EXERCISE 3 OF 14
Groove C -- Verse
83 / 116 BARS COVERED
0 / 14 PASSED · 13 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
PART D
CHORUS
VERSE
OUTRO
4 groovesFCS1DFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Borderline on drums

116 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 3:52 of playing, on hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
116
LENGTH
3:52
DIFFICULTY
55/100

silence through bars 1-8 and hi-hat through bars 9-116.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13, 15-17 and 19, and 39 more places -- 46.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    13
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x------xx-x---x-|
Borderline -- 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 13 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 -- F, G -- 2 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  2. Through Part D -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 2 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 14 minutes.
  5. Through the Chorus and the Verse -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Borderline?

120 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 Borderline hard to play on drums?

55 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 43 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

116 bars, about 3:52 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 13 exercises over 6 sittings, about 22 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 116 BARS ANALYSED