← SONGS

Living In America · James Brown

EXERCISE 1 OF 17
Groove D -- Verse
0 / 169 BARS COVERED
0 / 17 PASSED · 132 BARS LIT
CHORUS
VERSE
VERSE 2
VERSE 3
VERSE 4
VERSE 5
VERSE 6
3 groovesDBEFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Living In America on drums

169 bars of 4/4 at 114 BPM, about 5:56 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

71 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
114 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
169
LENGTH
5:56
DIFFICULTY
71/100

snare through bar 1 and hi-hat through bars 2-169.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-8, 10-12 and 14-20, and 10 more places -- 78.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    7
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-xxx-xxx-xxx-xo|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x---x---x---x---|
Living In America -- 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 5 and 25.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 15 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 -- 1 exercise, about 16 minutes.
  2. Through the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  3. Bars 1-33 -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  4. Bars 31-160 -- 6 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 15 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Living In America?

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 Living In America hard to play on drums?

71 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 59 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

169 bars, about 5:56 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 15 exercises over 5 sittings, about 23 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 Living In America?

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 5 and 25.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 169 BARS ANALYSED