Distant Lover · Marvin Gaye

99 bars of 6/4 -- not four -- at 140 BPM, 4:21 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

Funk / SoulJazz / Blues120 to 149 BPMShuffle / triplet
TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
99
LENGTH
4:21
DIFFICULTY
27/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 48% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-4, 7 and 9-12, and 13 more places -- 47.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

LOOP · 140 BPM
DISTANT LOVER · BAR 3
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

99 bars across 6 sections: 58 keep time, 1 is a fill and 34 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 2-25.

CHORUS
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
BREAK
3 groovesCS6GFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Distant Lover?

140 BPM, in 6/4, 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 Distant Lover hard to play on drums?

27 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 19 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

99 bars, about 4:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 14 exercises over 5 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.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 99 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Marvin Gaye drum parts

EVERY MARVIN GAYE CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →