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California Rain · James Marriott

EXERCISE 38 OF 40
Play the whole song with the record
66 / 71 BARS COVERED
0 / 40 PASSED · 71 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
PART F
CHORUS 2
PART H
PART M
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCFHMS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 9
LAND · 9
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 5
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play California Rain on drums

71 bars of 4/4 at a walking 105 BPM, 2:42 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
71
LENGTH
2:42
DIFFICULTY
65/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-12, snare through bars 13-20, hi-hat through bars 21-22, snare through bars 23-29 and hi-hat through bars 30-40, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-11, 33-39 and 55-61 -- 30.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    5
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |--o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |----X-------X---|
BD |x-x----x--x-----|
California Rain -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

9 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 4, 12, 20, 22, 30, 32 and 11 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 30 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 -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F, H -- 4 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. Bars 12-71 -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part F -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  5. Bars 27-41 -- 4 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  6. Bars 37-46 -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  7. Bars 41-58 -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  8. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 16 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is California Rain?

105 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 California Rain hard to play on drums?

65 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 39 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

71 bars, about 2:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 30 exercises over 8 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 California Rain?

9 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 4, 12, 20, 22, 30, 32 and 11 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 71 BARS ANALYSED