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Rough Boy · ZZ Top

EXERCISE 9 OF 16
Run F1 · Outro (bars 15-23)
76 / 95 BARS COVERED
0 / 16 PASSED · 9 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO
PART C
PART E
OUTRO
VERSE
4 groovesJFECFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
RUN · 1
JOIN · 3
LINK · 2
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Rough Boy on drums

95 bars of 4/4 at a walking 79 BPM, 4:49 of playing, on hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

53 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat.

TEMPO
79 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
95
LENGTH
4:49
DIFFICULTY
53/100

toms through bars 1-2, snare through bars 3-14 and hi-hat through bars 15-95.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 24-29, 31-32 and 35-37, and 13 more places -- 58.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    24
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------xxxx----|
Rough Boy -- 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 15 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 -- J, E -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  2. Bars 1-18 -- 5 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  3. Through the Outro and the Verse -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes. Open above.
  4. Through the Verse -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Rough Boy?

79 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 Rough Boy hard to play on drums?

53 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat. The beat itself is 45 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

95 bars, about 4:49 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 15 exercises over 5 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 95 BARS ANALYSED