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Honesty · Billy Joel

EXERCISE 17 OF 28
Groove L -- Part L
49 / 60 BARS COVERED
0 / 28 PASSED · 2 BARS LIT · IN THE PART L
PART B
PART C
CHORUS
PART G
PART S6
PART L
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
7 groovesDGBCL+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 3
JOIN · 5
LINK · 1
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Honesty on drums

60 bars, 3:42, at 65 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
65 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
60
LENGTH
3:42
DIFFICULTY
49/100

snare through bars 3-10, ride through bars 11-18, hi-hat through bars 19-26, snare through bars 27-35, kick and crashes through bars 36-39 and hi-hat through bars 40-52, and 1 more change after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-21, 23-25 and 40, and 2 more places -- 19.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    19
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Honesty -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 26, 30, 33, 50, 52 and 56.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 23 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 -- D, G -- 6 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Bars 11-39 -- 6 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  4. Bars 38-51 -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes. Open above.
  5. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 5 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Honesty?

65 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Honesty hard to play on drums?

49 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 19 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

60 bars, about 3:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 23 exercises over 6 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid 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.

How many fills are in Honesty?

4 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 26, 30, 33, 50, 52 and 56.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 60 BARS ANALYSED