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Stranger In A Strange Land · Leon Russell

EXERCISE 12 OF 26
Run E1 · Part E (bars 13-16)
58 / 78 BARS COVERED
0 / 26 PASSED · 4 BARS LIT · IN THE PART E
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
PART E
PART G
PART S5
CHORUS 2
PART G
OUTRO
VERSE
8 groovesMBGKE+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 8
FILL · 2
LAND · 2
RUN · 2
JOIN · 6
SECTION · 5
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Stranger In A Strange Land on drums

78 bars, 4:20, at 72 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

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

TEMPO
72 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
78
LENGTH
4:20
DIFFICULTY
58/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-12, ride through bars 13-15, hi-hat through bars 16-24, silence through bars 25-27 and hi-hat through bars 28-47, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 55, 57-59 and 62-77 -- 29% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    57
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-xx-x-xx-xx-x-x|
Stranger In A Strange Land -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

2 fills to learn, played 5 times: bars 12, 16, 35, 39 and 50.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 23 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 -- M, B -- 2 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- G -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  3. Bars 5-17 -- 7 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  4. Bars 13-40 -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  5. Bars 39-52 -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro and the Verse -- 4 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 2 exercises, about 14 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Stranger In A Strange Land?

72 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 Stranger In A Strange Land hard to play on drums?

58 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 66 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

78 bars, about 4:20 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 23 exercises over 7 sittings, about 27 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 Stranger In A Strange Land?

2 fills to learn, played 5 times: bars 12, 16, 35, 39 and 50.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 78 BARS ANALYSED