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Happy Song · John Petrucci

EXERCISE 13 OF 106
Fill at bar 18
125 / 222 BARS COVERED
0 / 106 PASSED · 1 BAR LIT · IN THE PART G
PART B
PART G
PART J
CHORUS
PART N
CHORUS 2
CHORUS 3
PART AI
PART AV
CHORUS 5
OUTRO 2
10 groovesFAIGNAV+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 17
FILL · 26
LAND · 26
RUN · 2
JOIN · 14
LINK · 11
SECTION · 9
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Happy Song on drums

222 bars at 155 BPM -- fast, and 5:41 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
155 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
222
LENGTH
5:41
DIFFICULTY
68/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-6, toms through bars 7-8, hi-hat through bars 9-17, toms through bars 18-21, ride through bars 22-25 and hi-hat through bars 26-34, and 14 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-11, 13-15 and 17, and 28 more places -- 34.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    10
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
HH |o-----------o-----------o-----------o-----------|
SD |------------x-----------------------x-----------|
BD |x-----------------------x-----x-----------x-----|
Happy Song -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

26 fills to learn, played 41 times: bars 7, 8, 18, 26, 61, 62 and 35 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 79 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 -- F, G -- 2 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- AI -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. Bars 1-19 -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Through Part G and Part J -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes. Open above.
  5. Bars 26-86 -- 3 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Through Part J and the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  7. Bars 28-48 -- 3 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  8. Through Part G and Part N -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  9. and 16 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Happy Song?

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

Is Happy Song hard to play on drums?

68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 50 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

222 bars, about 5:41 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 79 exercises over 24 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, 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 Happy Song?

26 fills to learn, played 41 times: bars 7, 8, 18, 26, 61, 62 and 35 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 222 BARS ANALYSED