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Empire State of Mind · Jay Z & Alicia Keys

Empire State of Mind · Jay Z & Alicia Keys
EXERCISE 14 OF 17
Run C2 · Chorus 2 (bars 51-85)
94 / 98 BARS COVERED
0 / 17 PASSED · 35 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS 2
PART B
PART D
PART A
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCAEDBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 6
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Empire State of Mind on drums

98 bars of 4/4 at a walking 85 BPM, 4:37 of playing, on hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
85 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
4:37
DIFFICULTY
45/100

hi-hat through bars 1-6, snare through bars 7-12, hi-hat through bars 13-21, snare through bars 22-27, hi-hat through bars 28-30 and snare through bars 31-33, and 9 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 24 more places -- 32.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    1
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x------x-xx--x-x|
Empire State of Mind -- 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 16 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 -- A, B -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. Bars 1-32 -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  3. Bars 4-51 -- 6 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 23 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Empire State of Mind?

85 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 Empire State of Mind hard to play on drums?

45 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 47 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

98 bars, about 4:37 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 4 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 98 BARS ANALYSED