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Help Me · Joni Mitchell

Help Me · Joni Mitchell
EXERCISE 4 OF 13
Groove D
40 / 71 BARS COVERED
0 / 13 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO
CHORUS
PART G
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesCGS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 2
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Help Me on drums

71 bars of 4/4 at a walking 82 BPM, 3:21 of playing, on hi-hat, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

29 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how much of it falls off the beat the part that decides it.

TEMPO
82 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
71
LENGTH
3:21
DIFFICULTY
29/100

hi-hat through bars 2-36, toms through bars 37-48, hi-hat through bars 49-59 and toms through bars 60-71.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-10, 20-27 and 50-57 -- 35.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    4
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |xxx-xxxxxxx-xxxx|
BD |---x-------x----|
Help Me -- 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 -- C, G -- 3 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- D -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  3. Bars 31-63 -- 6 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Help Me?

82 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 Help Me hard to play on drums?

29 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how much of it falls off the beat the part that decides it. The beat itself is 35 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

71 bars, about 3:21 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 12 exercises over 4 sittings, about 22 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, mid tom, floor tom and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 71 BARS ANALYSED