Valerie · Amy Winehouse

185 bars at 205 BPM -- fast, and 3:37 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

Funk / SoulJazz / Blues150 BPM and upBeginner
TEMPO
205 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
3:37
DIFFICULTY
63/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 34% of the song

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 41-56, 105-120 and 153-183 -- 34.1% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 205 BPM
VALERIE · BARS 41-42
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

2 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 40, 104, 151 and 152.

LOOP · 205 BPM
BAR 40 · LANDS ON BAR 41 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 205 BPM
BARS 151-152 · LANDS ON BAR 153 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

185 bars across 8 sections: 169 keep time, 4 are fills and 2 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 7-37.

PART A
CHORUS
PART A
CHORUS 2
PART I
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
4 groovesEAIBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Valerie?

205 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Valerie hard to play on drums?

63 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 46 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

185 bars, about 3:37 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 22 exercises over 7 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in Valerie?

2 fills to learn, played 4 times: bars 40, 104, 151 and 152.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 185 BARS ANALYSED
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