← SONGS

Pennies · Smashing Pumpkins

EXERCISE 1 OF 18
Groove C -- Chorus (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 70 BARS COVERED
0 / 18 PASSED · 39 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO, OUTRO 2
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesCES1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Pennies on drums

70 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 2:20 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

49 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
70
LENGTH
2:20
DIFFICULTY
49/100

silence through bars 1-4, ride through bars 5-54, toms through bars 55-56, ride through bars 57-68 and kick and crashes through bars 69-70.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 5-16, 18 and 21-24, and 4 more places -- 58.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    5                6
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
RD |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|----x-------x---|
BD |x-x-----x-x---x-|--x---x---x-----|
HF |x---x---x---x---|x---x---x---x---|
Pennies -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 20, 25, 26, 42, 43, 44 and 7 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 13 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, E -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. Through the Chorus and the Outro -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. Bars 36-60 -- 5 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 18 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Pennies?

120 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 Pennies hard to play on drums?

49 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 35 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

70 bars, about 2:20 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 13 exercises over 4 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Pennies?

4 fills to learn, played 13 times: bars 20, 25, 26, 42, 43, 44 and 7 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 70 BARS ANALYSED