← SONGS

Little Guitars · Van Halen

EXERCISE 24 OF 46
Fill at bar 38, 58 and 102
96 / 119 BARS COVERED
0 / 46 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART J, OUTRO
PART A
PART D
CHORUS
PART J
CHORUS 2
PART J
PART O
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
7 groovesGJOAH+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
FILL · 8
LAND · 8
RUN · 3
JOIN · 8
LINK · 3
SECTION · 7
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Little Guitars on drums

119 bars, 6:33, at 72 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

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
72 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
119
LENGTH
6:33
DIFFICULTY
50/100

hi-hat through bars 1-10, ride through bars 11-12, hi-hat through bars 13-26, ride through bars 27-30, hi-hat through bars 31-46 and ride through bars 47-50, and 3 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 20-26, 40-46 and 60-62, and 2 more places -- 32.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

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

The fills

8 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 11, 12, 18, 34, 36, 38 and 11 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 37 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 -- G, H -- 2 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- J -- 3 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  3. Through Part A -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  4. Through Part A and Part D -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  5. Through Part D and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  6. Bars 19-35 -- 6 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  7. Bars 35-50 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  8. Bars 53-67 -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  9. and 2 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Little Guitars?

72 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Little Guitars 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 23 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

119 bars, about 6:33 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 37 exercises over 10 sittings, about 25 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 Little Guitars?

8 fills to learn, played 17 times: bars 11, 12, 18, 34, 36, 38 and 11 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 119 BARS ANALYSED