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Pharrell Williams - Happy · Pharrell Williams

Pharrell Williams - Happy · Pharrell Williams
EXERCISE 3 OF 13
Groove C -- Part C
33 / 61 BARS COVERED
0 / 13 PASSED · 12 BARS LIT · IN THE PART C, OUTRO 2
CHORUS
PART C
CHORUS 2
PART C
PART E
PART C
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesBCEFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 4
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Pharrell Williams - Happy on drums

61 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 1:32 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
61
LENGTH
1:32
DIFFICULTY
53/100

hi-hat through bars 1-17, ride through bars 18-21, hi-hat through bars 22-37, ride through bars 38-41, toms through bars 42-49 and ride through bars 50-53, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-17 and 22-37 -- 52.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    2
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x---o---x---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-----x---x---x-|
HF |------------x---|
Pharrell Williams - Happy -- 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 12 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 -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes. Open above.
  3. Through Part C and the Chorus 2 -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Through Part C and Part E -- 4 exercises, about 21 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Pharrell Williams - Happy?

160 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 Pharrell Williams - Happy hard to play on drums?

53 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?

61 bars, about 1:32 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 12 exercises over 5 sittings, about 19 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.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 61 BARS ANALYSED