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Distant Lover · Marvin Gaye

EXERCISE 1 OF 15
Groove C -- Chorus
0 / 99 BARS COVERED
0 / 15 PASSED · 31 BARS LIT
CHORUS
PART G
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
BREAK
3 groovesCS6GFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Distant Lover on drums

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.

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

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
99
LENGTH
4:21
DIFFICULTY
27/100

kick and crashes through bar 1, ride through bars 2-25, hi-hat through bars 26-29, ride through bars 30-53, hi-hat through bars 54-59 and ride through bars 60-65, and 1 more change after that.

The beat

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.

    3
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a
RD |x---x---x---x---x---x---|
SD |------------x-----------|
BD |x---------------x---x---|
Distant Lover -- 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 14 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, G, B -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  2. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  3. Bars 20-37 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Bars 31-66 -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

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