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Little Drummer Boy · For King & Country

Little Drummer Boy · For King & Country
EXERCISE 5 OF 14
Join Part A to Break (bars 7-9)
71 / 121 BARS COVERED
0 / 14 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART A, BREAK
PART A
BREAK
CHORUS
BREAK 2
OUTRO 2
6 groovesCFS2S4A+1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 3
JOIN · 3
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Little Drummer Boy on drums

121 bars of 4/4 at a walking 104 BPM, 4:39 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
104 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
121
LENGTH
4:39
DIFFICULTY
43/100

snare through bars 1-8, silence through bars 9-19, hi-hat through bars 20-82, silence through bars 83-92, snare through bars 93-96 and hi-hat through bars 97-121.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 20-82 -- 62.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    20
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-----x-x-------|
Little Drummer Boy -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 13 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 -- 4 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  2. Bars 7-96 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Little Drummer Boy?

104 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 Little Drummer Boy hard to play on drums?

43 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 28 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

121 bars, about 4:39 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 13 exercises over 4 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 121 BARS ANALYSED