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Pumped Up Kicks · Foster The People

EXERCISE 4 OF 7
Run A1 · Chorus (bars 1-98)
114 / 123 BARS COVERED
0 / 7 PASSED · 98 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
2 groovesADFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
SECTION · 1
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Pumped Up Kicks on drums

123 bars of 4/4 at 128 BPM, about 3:51 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
128 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
123
LENGTH
3:51
DIFFICULTY
49/100

hi-hat through bars 1-98, kick and crashes through bars 99-106 and hi-hat through bars 107-123.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3-5 and 7-9, and 26 more places -- 69.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    3
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x-x-x---x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
FT |x---------------|
BD |x-------x-------|
Pumped Up Kicks -- 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 6 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 -- A -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  2. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Pumped Up Kicks?

128 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 Pumped Up Kicks hard to play on drums?

49 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?

123 bars, about 3:51 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 6 exercises over 2 sittings, about 27 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.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 123 BARS ANALYSED