Purple Rain · Prince & The Revolution

106 bars, 6:59, at 60 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot and nothing else.

51 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how fine the subdivision is.

TEMPO

60 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

106

LENGTH

6:59

DIFFICULTY

51/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-58, ride through bars 59-60, hi-hat through bars 61-69, ride through bars 70-95 and kick and crashes through bars 96-103, and 1 more change after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-11, 15-20 and 24-29, and 11 more places -- 45% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    11
    1...............2...............3...............4...............
CC |x---------------------------------------------------------------|
HH |--------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------x-------|
SD |----------------x-------------------------------x---------------|
BD |x-------------------------------x-------------------------------|

8 fills to learn, played 18 times: bars 13, 22, 31, 40, 49, 58 and 12 more.

It cuts the song into 25 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, J -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
2. Bars 12-79 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
3. Through the Chorus -- 3 exercises, about 18 minutes.
4. Through the Chorus and Part K -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
5. Through Part K and Part J -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
6. Through Part J and Part S5 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
7. Bars 96-106 -- 6 exercises, about 23 minutes.
8. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.