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Simple Man · Lynyrd Skynyrd

EXERCISE 21 OF 27
Groove N
93 / 104 BARS COVERED
0 / 27 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE OUTRO 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesJEBS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 5
FILL · 7
LAND · 7
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
LINK · 1
SECTION · 3
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Simple Man on drums

104 bars, 6:53, at 60 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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
60 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
104
LENGTH
6:53
DIFFICULTY
56/100

ride through bars 3-7, hi-hat through bars 8-39, ride through bars 40-49, hi-hat through bars 50-56, ride through bars 57-66 and hi-hat through bars 67-70, and 4 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 40-42, 44-46 and 48, and 9 more places -- 27.5% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    40
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-------x-------|
RD |--x-x-x---x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x--x-x-xx--x-x-x|
Simple Man -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

7 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 7, 17, 29, 43, 47, 49 and 10 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 19 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 -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 5 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. Through the Outro -- 6 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  4. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 7 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  5. Through the Outro 2 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  6. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Simple Man?

60 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. Slow enough to hear every mistake, which is why the room lets you sit at the written tempo rather than under it.

Is Simple Man 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 47 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

104 bars, about 6:53 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 6 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Simple Man?

7 fills to learn, played 16 times: bars 7, 17, 29, 43, 47, 49 and 10 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 104 BARS ANALYSED