← SONGS

Surf · Mac Miller

EXERCISE 1 OF 19
Groove D -- Chorus
0 / 76 BARS COVERED
0 / 19 PASSED · 22 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO 2
COUNT-IN
CHORUS
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
3 groovesDFS1Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 9
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 2
LINK · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Surf on drums

76 bars, 4:12, at 72 BPM: slow enough that every note is exposed. Crash, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick and nothing else.

44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO
72 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
76
LENGTH
4:12
DIFFICULTY
44/100

silence through bars 1-4 and hi-hat through bars 5-76.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 7, 9-12 and 30-32, and 12 more places -- 30.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    30
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Surf -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

1 fill to learn, played 4 times: bars 73, 74, 75 and 76.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 17 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 -- D, F -- 2 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- C -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  3. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Through the Outro and the Outro 2 -- 3 exercises, about 24 minutes.
  5. Through the Outro 2 -- 2 exercises, about 22 minutes.
  6. Through the Outro 2 -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
  7. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Surf?

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 Surf hard to play on drums?

44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 20 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

76 bars, about 4:12 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 7 sittings, about 23 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Surf?

1 fill to learn, played 4 times: bars 73, 74, 75 and 76.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 76 BARS ANALYSED