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Boys Keep Swinging · David Bowie

EXERCISE 3 OF 10
Groove A -- Outro
73 / 100 BARS COVERED
0 / 10 PASSED · 14 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO, OUTRO 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
2 groovesDAFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 1
LINK · 1
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Boys Keep Swinging on drums

100 bars of 4/4 at 123 BPM, about 3:15 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
100
LENGTH
3:15
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The time is kept on the hi-hat the whole way through.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-22, 25-29 and 32-34, and 9 more places -- 58% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    18
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Boys Keep Swinging -- 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 9 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 -- D, B -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  2. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  3. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Boys Keep Swinging?

123 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 Boys Keep Swinging hard to play on drums?

44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 29 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

100 bars, about 3:15 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 9 exercises over 3 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 100 BARS ANALYSED