Smooth Operator - Official - 1984 · Sade

124 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 4:07 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

74 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO

120 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

124

LENGTH

4:07

DIFFICULTY

74/100

hi-hat through bars 1-65, snare through bars 66-70, hi-hat through bars 71-116, snare through bars 117-120 and hi-hat through bars 121-124.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 42-48, 61-65 and 71-84, and 2 more places -- 48.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    42
    1...........2...........3...........4...........
CC |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|
HH |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|
SD |------------x-----------------------x-----------|
BD |x-----------------x-----x-----------------x-----|

2 fills to learn, played 2 times: bars 32 and 57.

It cuts the song into 36 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 -- I -- 1 exercise, about 17 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- A -- 1 exercise, about 18 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- E -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
4. Through Part A -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
5. Through Part A and Part C -- 3 exercises, about 28 minutes.
6. Through Part C and Part D -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
7. Bars 14-33 -- 6 exercises, about 23 minutes.
8. Bars 34-41 -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
9. and 4 more sittings after that.