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Only The Good Die Young · Billy Joel

EXERCISE 9 OF 10
Run C1 · Outro (bars 9-129)
91 / 129 BARS COVERED
0 / 10 PASSED · 121 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO
COUNT-IN
OUTRO
2 groovesCS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 1
SECTION · 1
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Only The Good Die Young on drums

129 bars at 156 BPM -- fast, and 3:18 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
129
LENGTH
3:18
DIFFICULTY
45/100

silence through bars 1-9 and hi-hat through bars 10-129.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-15, 18-23 and 28, and 22 more places -- 57.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    11
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Only The Good Die Young -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 2 times: bars 9 and 129.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 7 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 -- C -- 4 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- G -- 4 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Only The Good Die Young?

156 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 Only The Good Die Young hard to play on drums?

45 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 36 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

129 bars, about 3:18 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 7 exercises over 3 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, hi-hat, snare, 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 Only The Good Die Young?

2 fills to learn, played 2 times: bars 9 and 129.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 129 BARS ANALYSED