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Never Say Goodbye · Bon Jovi

EXERCISE 1 OF 40
Groove B -- Chorus 2
0 / 78 BARS COVERED
0 / 40 PASSED · 24 BARS LIT
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
PART F
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesBEFFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 11
LAND · 11
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 4
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Never Say Goodbye on drums

78 bars, 4:26, at 70 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
70 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
78
LENGTH
4:26
DIFFICULTY
40/100

toms through bar 1 and hi-hat through bars 2-78.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-3, 18-20 and 22-24, and 6 more places -- 30.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    3
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x---------------|
HH |--o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-----x-x-------|
Never Say Goodbye -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

11 fills to learn, played 19 times: bars 1, 13, 17, 21, 29, 33 and 13 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 28 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 -- B, E -- 6 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- F -- 6 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Bars 2-22 -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  4. Bars 23-43 -- 9 exercises, about 34 minutes.
  5. Bars 48-63 -- 8 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  6. The whole song -- 6 exercises, about 25 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Never Say Goodbye?

70 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 Never Say Goodbye hard to play on drums?

40 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 22 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

78 bars, about 4:26 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 28 exercises over 6 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Never Say Goodbye?

11 fills to learn, played 19 times: bars 1, 13, 17, 21, 29, 33 and 13 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 78 BARS ANALYSED