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Let's Dance · David Bowie

EXERCISE 37 OF 37
Play the whole song with the record
123 / 123 BARS COVERED
0 / 37 PASSED · 123 BARS LIT
PART A
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
PART C
PART A
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesDCAEFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 1
JOIN · 6
LINK · 6
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Let's Dance on drums

123 bars of 4/4 at 114 BPM, about 4:19 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
114 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
123
LENGTH
4:19
DIFFICULTY
58/100

hi-hat through bars 1-41, toms through bars 42-43 and hi-hat through bars 44-123.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-7, 9-10 and 12, and 30 more places -- 45.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    6
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x---x---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x--x--x-x-------|
Let's Dance -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 11 times: bars 4, 40, 41, 42, 43, 59 and 5 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 29 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, C -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  2. Through Part A -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
  3. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. Through the Chorus and Part E -- 6 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  5. Bars 46-59 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Bars 52-77 -- 10 exercises, about 37 minutes.
  7. Bars 74-116 -- 7 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  8. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Let's Dance?

114 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 Let's Dance hard to play on drums?

58 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 40 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

123 bars, about 4:19 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 29 exercises over 8 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, mid 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 Let's Dance?

7 fills to learn, played 11 times: bars 4, 40, 41, 42, 43, 59 and 5 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 123 BARS ANALYSED