← SONGS

Keep Yourself Alive · Queen

EXERCISE 3 OF 56
Groove V -- Part V
35 / 126 BARS COVERED
0 / 56 PASSED · 11 BARS LIT · IN THE PART V, PART M, OUTRO
COUNT-IN
PART C
CHORUS
PART M
CHORUS 2
PART D
PART V
PART M
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
10 groovesEVMDS1+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 11
FILL · 9
LAND · 9
RUN · 3
JOIN · 12
LINK · 3
SECTION · 8
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Keep Yourself Alive on drums

126 bars of 4/4 at 135 BPM, about 3:42 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
135 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
126
LENGTH
3:42
DIFFICULTY
63/100

silence through bars 1-8, snare through bars 9-14, hi-hat through bars 15-72, ride through bars 73-76, toms through bars 77-85 and hi-hat through bars 86-93, and 4 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15, 22 and 24, and 14 more places -- 18.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    15
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |----x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x--x----|
Keep Yourself Alive -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

9 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 18, 25, 29, 33, 37, 47 and 17 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 46 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, U -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- V -- 4 exercises, about 34 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part C and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  5. Bars 16-40 -- 8 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  6. Through Part M -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  7. Through Part H and Part M -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  8. Bars 52-73 -- 8 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  9. and 4 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Keep Yourself Alive?

135 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 Keep Yourself Alive hard to play on drums?

63 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 45 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

126 bars, about 3:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 46 exercises over 12 sittings, about 28 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 Keep Yourself Alive?

9 fills to learn, played 23 times: bars 18, 25, 29, 33, 37, 47 and 17 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 126 BARS ANALYSED