← SONGS

Just The Way You Are · Bruno Mars

EXERCISE 12 OF 22
Groove G
71 / 81 BARS COVERED
0 / 22 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART F, OUTRO, OUTRO 2
CHORUS
PART F
PART H
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesDHFBS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 2
JOIN · 4
LINK · 3
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Just The Way You Are on drums

81 bars of 4/4 at a walking 108 BPM, 3:00 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
3:00
DIFFICULTY
72/100

silence through bars 1-4, kick and crashes through bars 5-7 and hi-hat through bars 8-81.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 9-24 and 41-56 -- 41.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    9                10
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|----------------|
HH |--xxx-xxx-xxo---|x-xxx-xxx-xx-x--|
SD |----x-------x---|----x-------x---|
FT |---x---xx-----x-|---x---xx-----x-|
BD |x---------x-----|x---------x-----|
HF |--------------xx|------------x-xx|
Just The Way You Are -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 8, 40 and 80.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 19 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 -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. Bars 7-28 -- 5 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  4. Through Part F and Part H -- 4 exercises, about 32 minutes. Open above.
  5. Through Part H and the Chorus 2 -- 5 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 15 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Just The Way You Are?

108 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 Just The Way You Are hard to play on drums?

72 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 63 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

81 bars, about 3:00 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 6 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, 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 Just The Way You Are?

2 fills to learn, played 3 times: bars 8, 40 and 80.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 81 BARS ANALYSED