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The Little Drummer Boy · Christmas

EXERCISE 1 OF 9
Groove A -- Chorus
0 / 83 BARS COVERED
0 / 9 PASSED · 51 BARS LIT
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
PART B
OUTRO
4 groovesABS5S2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 2
RUN · 2
JOIN · 2
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Little Drummer Boy on drums

83 bars of 4/4 at 116 BPM, about 2:52 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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

TEMPO
116 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
83
LENGTH
2:52
DIFFICULTY
43/100

hi-hat through bars 1-24, silence through bars 25-26, hi-hat through bars 27-72, silence through bars 73-76 and hi-hat through bars 77-83.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-5, 7-9 and 11-13, and 15 more places -- 67.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

    1
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |x---x---x---o---|
BD |x-------x-------|
The Little Drummer Boy -- 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 8 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 -- A -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes. Open above.
  2. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Little Drummer Boy?

116 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 The Little Drummer Boy hard to play on drums?

43 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 27 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

83 bars, about 2:52 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 8 exercises over 2 sittings, about 29 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 · 83 BARS ANALYSED