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Runnin' Down A Dream · Tom Petty

EXERCISE 15 OF 19
Play the whole song with the record
174 / 181 BARS COVERED
0 / 19 PASSED · 181 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
PART B
CHORUS
PART B
CHORUS 2
PART B
CHORUS 3
PART B
CHORUS 4
PART B
CHORUS 5
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesCBS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
FILL · 4
LAND · 4
RUN · 2
JOIN · 2
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Runnin' Down A Dream on drums

181 bars at 170 BPM -- fast, and 4:16 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
170 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
181
LENGTH
4:16
DIFFICULTY
56/100

hi-hat through bars 2-65, toms through bars 66-67, hi-hat through bars 68-104, toms through bars 105-106 and hi-hat through bars 107-181.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 26-34, 55-63 and 68-77, and 7 more places -- 55.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    27
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x-----x-x-----|
Runnin' Down A Dream -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

4 fills to learn, played 12 times: bars 38, 66, 67, 105, 106, 121 and 6 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 14 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 -- 2 exercises, about 18 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- B -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Bars 51-82 -- 7 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Runnin' Down A Dream?

170 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 Runnin' Down A Dream hard to play on drums?

56 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 43 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

181 bars, about 4:16 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 14 exercises over 4 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Runnin' Down A Dream?

4 fills to learn, played 12 times: bars 38, 66, 67, 105, 106, 121 and 6 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 181 BARS ANALYSED