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Life On Mars? · David Bowie

EXERCISE 10 OF 19
Join Chorus to Part A (bars 24-26)
65 / 87 BARS COVERED
0 / 19 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, PART A
CHORUS
PART A
PART H
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesDHAS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 7
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 3
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Life On Mars? on drums

87 bars of 4/4 at 128 BPM, about 2:43 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
128 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
87
LENGTH
2:43
DIFFICULTY
40/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-76, kick and crashes through bars 77-85 and toms through bars 86-87.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 7-10, 12 and 14-16, and 7 more places -- 34.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    9
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x---o---x---|
SD |--------x-------|
BD |x-----x-------x-|
Life On Mars? -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 86 and 87.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 17 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, H -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Bars 22-60 -- 7 exercises, about 34 minutes. Open above.
  5. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 14 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Life On Mars??

128 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 Life On Mars? hard to play on drums?

40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 30 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

87 bars, about 2:43 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 5 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Life On Mars??

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 86 and 87.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 87 BARS ANALYSED