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Modern Love · David Bowie

EXERCISE 14 OF 36
Join Part E to Part D (bars 79-81)
151 / 169 BARS COVERED
0 / 36 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART E, PART D
PART B
CHORUS
PART E
PART D
CHORUS 2
PART E
PART C
OUTRO
8 groovesFEBMC+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
FILL · 3
LAND · 3
RUN · 1
JOIN · 7
LINK · 6
SECTION · 7
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Modern Love on drums

169 bars at 180 BPM -- fast, and 3:45 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
169
LENGTH
3:45
DIFFICULTY
56/100

silence through bars 1-3, hi-hat through bars 4-165 and snare through bars 166-169.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9, 11 and 13, and 40 more places -- 31.7% 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---x---x---|
SD |----x-x-----x---|
BD |x-------x-x-----|
Modern Love -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

3 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 134, 142, 150 and 158.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 32 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 -- E, C -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Bars 3-136 -- 5 exercises, about 33 minutes.
  4. Bars 35-81 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  5. Bars 77-135 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  6. Through Part E and Part C -- 6 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  7. Through Part C and the Outro -- 5 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  8. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  9. and 1 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Modern Love?

180 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Modern Love hard to play on drums?

56 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 42 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

169 bars, about 3:45 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 32 exercises over 9 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Modern Love?

3 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 134, 142, 150 and 158.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 169 BARS ANALYSED