← SONGS

Fast Car · Tracy Chapman

EXERCISE 17 OF 22
Part F into Chorus 3 with the record (bars 86-93)
119 / 129 BARS COVERED
0 / 22 PASSED · 8 BARS LIT · IN THE PART F, CHORUS 3
PART B
CHORUS
PART F
CHORUS 2
PART F
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesCFBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 3
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Fast Car on drums

129 bars of 4/4 at a walking 104 BPM, 4:57 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare and kick.

41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

TEMPO
104 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
129
LENGTH
4:57
DIFFICULTY
41/100

hi-hat through bars 1-126 and ride through bars 127-129.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 10-52, 63-64 and 67-77, and 4 more places -- 62.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    10               11
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x-x-x-xxx---|x---x-x-x-xxxxxx|
SD |r---r---r---r---|r---r---r---r---|
Fast Car -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 78 and 11 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 17 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 27 minutes.
  2. Bars 6-56 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Bars 50-89 -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Bars 86-129 -- 5 exercises, about 24 minutes. Open above.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Fast Car?

104 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 Fast Car hard to play on drums?

41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it. The beat itself is 21 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

129 bars, about 4:57 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 5 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Fast Car?

4 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 53, 57, 58, 59, 61, 78 and 11 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 129 BARS ANALYSED