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Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds · The Beatles

EXERCISE 1 OF 20
Groove F -- Outro 2
0 / 122 BARS COVERED
0 / 20 PASSED · 32 BARS LIT · IN THE PART F, OUTRO 2
CHORUS
PART D
PART F
CHORUS 2
PART D
PART F
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesAFDCS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
RUN · 2
JOIN · 4
LINK · 3
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds on drums

122 bars of 3/4 -- not four -- at 122 BPM, 3:19 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
122 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
122
LENGTH
3:19
DIFFICULTY
49/100

silence through bars 1-4, kick and crashes through bars 5-11, hi-hat through bars 12-14, kick and crashes through bars 15-19, hi-hat through bars 20-23 and ride through bars 24-44, and 10 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-43, 76-82 and 101-103, and 4 more places -- 27.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    39
    1.....2.....3.....4.....
RD |x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|
SD |------x-----------x-----|
BD |x-----------x--x-----x--|
HF |------x-----------x-----|
Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds -- 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 19 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 -- F, D -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Bars 20-47 -- 6 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  4. Bars 61-103 -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds?

122 BPM, in 3/4, with the time kept in thirty-second 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 Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds hard to play on drums?

49 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 50 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

122 bars, about 3:19 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 5 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high 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.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 122 BARS ANALYSED