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Fireflies · Owl City

Fireflies · Owl City
EXERCISE 14 OF 26
Run E2 · Part E (bars 27-30)
56 / 73 BARS COVERED
0 / 26 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE PART E
COUNT-IN
PART E
PART J
PART E
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesNCEJS1+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 10
RUN · 2
JOIN · 5
LINK · 4
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Fireflies on drums

73 bars of 4/4 at a walking 90 BPM, 3:15 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
73
LENGTH
3:15
DIFFICULTY
64/100

silence through bars 1-10, hi-hat through bars 11-16, toms through bars 17-24, hi-hat through bars 25-32, snare through bars 33-43 and hi-hat through bars 44-50, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 33-35, 37-39 and 58-64, and 1 more place -- 31.3% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    33
    1.......2.......3.......4.......
CC |x-------x-------x-------x-------|
SD |--------r---------------r-------|
BD |x-------------x-x---------------|
Fireflies -- 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 25 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 -- N, C -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- E -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
  3. Through Part E -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  4. Through Part E and Part J -- 2 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  5. Through Part E and Part J -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Through Part J and Part E -- 4 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  7. Through Part E and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  8. Through the Chorus -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  9. and 2 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Fireflies?

90 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 Fireflies hard to play on drums?

64 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 46 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

73 bars, about 3:15 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 25 exercises over 10 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 · 73 BARS ANALYSED