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Last Christmas · Wham!

EXERCISE 9 OF 22
Fill at bar 20, 48, 76 and 2 more (a small one)
113 / 118 BARS COVERED
0 / 22 PASSED · 5 BARS LIT · IN THE PART B, PART A, OUTRO 2
CHORUS
PART B
CHORUS 2
PART A
CHORUS 3
PART B
CHORUS 4
PART B
OUTRO 2
3 groovesCABFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 7
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Last Christmas on drums

118 bars of 4/4 at a walking 108 BPM, 4:22 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

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

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
118
LENGTH
4:22
DIFFICULTY
50/100

The time is kept on the hi-hat the whole way through.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3, 5 and 7, and 33 more places -- 30.5% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    3
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |----x-----------|
HH |x-x---x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Last Christmas -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 20, 48, 76, 88, 96 and 116.

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 -- C, A -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 2 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part B -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Bars 17-61 -- 8 exercises, about 35 minutes. Open above.
  6. The whole song -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Last Christmas?

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 Last Christmas hard to play on drums?

50 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 27 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

118 bars, about 4:22 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 6 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

How many fills are in Last Christmas?

2 fills to learn, played 6 times: bars 20, 48, 76, 88, 96 and 116.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 118 BARS ANALYSED