← SONGS

Girlfriend · Avril Lavigne

EXERCISE 15 OF 37
Fill at bar 41
135 / 146 BARS COVERED
0 / 37 PASSED · 1 BAR LIT · IN THE PART H
PART B
PART F
PART H
CHORUS
PART F
PART H
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
6 groovesJBFHD+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 2
JOIN · 7
LINK · 4
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Girlfriend on drums

146 bars at 164 BPM -- fast, and 3:34 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
164 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
146
LENGTH
3:34
DIFFICULTY
57/100

snare through bars 1-19, hi-hat through bars 20-33, snare through bars 34-41, hi-hat through bars 42-73, snare through bars 74-81 and hi-hat through bars 82-97, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 42-56, 82-88 and 90-96, and 3 more places -- 33.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    43
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o---o---o---o---|
SD |----X-------X---|
BD |x-----x---x-----|
Girlfriend -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 25, 33, 41, 57, 59, 65 and 7 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 29 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 -- J, B -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. Through Part D -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
  3. Through Part D and Part F -- 3 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  4. Through Part F and Part H -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  5. Bars 38-60 -- 7 exercises, about 25 minutes. Open above.
  6. Bars 60-82 -- 7 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  7. Bars 80-125 -- 8 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  8. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Girlfriend?

164 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Girlfriend hard to play on drums?

57 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 38 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

146 bars, about 3:34 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 29 exercises over 8 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Girlfriend?

7 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 25, 33, 41, 57, 59, 65 and 7 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 146 BARS ANALYSED