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Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Acoustic Version) · Paul Simon

EXERCISE 7 OF 13
Groove C
56 / 81 BARS COVERED
0 / 13 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO 2
PART B
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesDABFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
LINK · 1
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Acoustic Version) on drums

81 bars of 4/4 at a walking 100 BPM, 3:14 of playing, on hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
100 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
61/100

hi-hat through bars 1-32, toms through bars 33-47, hi-hat through bars 48-67, toms through bars 68-74 and hi-hat through bars 75-81.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 24 more places -- 34.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    1
    1.......2.......3.......4.......
HH |--x-----x---x-------------------|
SD |----x-----x-------------xxx-x-x-|
FT |----------------x---------------|
BD |x-------------x-x---------------|
HF |x-----x-------------------------|
Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Acoustic Version) -- 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 12 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 30 minutes.
  2. Through Part B and the Outro -- 4 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  3. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  4. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Acoustic Version)?

100 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second 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 Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover (Acoustic Version) hard to play on drums?

61 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 53 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

81 bars, about 3:14 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 12 exercises over 5 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, high 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.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 81 BARS ANALYSED