Smooth Criminal · Michael Jackson

121 bars of 4/4 at 117 BPM, about 4:08 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

PopFunk / Soul90 to 119 BPMIntermediate
TEMPO
117 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
121
LENGTH
4:08
DIFFICULTY
71/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 33% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3, 5 and 7, and 37 more places -- 33.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 117 BPM
SMOOTH CRIMINAL · BAR 59
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

121 bars across 7 sections: 110 keep time and 2 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 72-115.

VERSE
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
VERSE 3
4 groovesBEGIFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Smooth Criminal?

117 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 Smooth Criminal hard to play on drums?

71 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 71 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

121 bars, about 4:08 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 19 exercises over 7 sittings, about 24 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 · 121 BARS ANALYSED
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