The Nightfly · Donald Fagen

21 bars of 4/4 at a walking 105 BPM, 0:47 of playing, on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick.

RockJazz / Blues90 to 119 BPMFour drums or fewer
TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
21
LENGTH
0:47
DIFFICULTY
51/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 29% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6, 13 and 15-16, and 1 more place -- 28.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 105 BPM
THE NIGHTFLY · BAR 13
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 1.

LOOP · 105 BPM
BAR 1 · LANDS ON BAR 2
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

21 bars across 2 sections: 18 keep time and 1 is a fill. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 11-21.

OUTRO
VERSE
2 groovesECFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is The Nightfly?

105 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 Nightfly hard to play on drums?

51 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 41 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

21 bars, about 0:47 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 10 exercises over 3 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in The Nightfly?

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 1.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 21 BARS ANALYSED
AT THIS LEVEL

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