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Smooth Operator (per Nuccione) · Sade

EXERCISE 1 OF 16
Groove E -- Chorus
0 / 124 BARS COVERED
0 / 16 PASSED · 64 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, CHORUS 2, OUTRO
PART A
PART A
CHORUS
PART H
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
5 groovesEAHS2S7Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
RUN · 1
JOIN · 5
LINK · 3
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Smooth Operator (per Nuccione) on drums

124 bars of 4/4 at 117 BPM, about 4:14 of playing, on ride, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
117 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
124
LENGTH
4:14
DIFFICULTY
48/100

hi-hat through bars 1-56, ride through bars 57-64 and hi-hat through bars 65-124.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 49-54, 65-90 and 93-124 -- 52.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    49
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-----x-x-----x-|
Smooth Operator (per Nuccione) -- 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 -- E, A -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes. Open above.
  2. Bars 1-52 -- 5 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Bars 53-68 -- 5 exercises, about 31 minutes.
  4. The whole song -- 3 exercises, about 19 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Smooth Operator (per Nuccione)?

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 Operator (per Nuccione) hard to play on drums?

48 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 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

124 bars, about 4:14 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 15 exercises over 4 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

ride, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 124 BARS ANALYSED