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Your Best American Girl · Mitski

EXERCISE 21 OF 21
Play the whole song with the record
47 / 65 BARS COVERED
0 / 21 PASSED · 65 BARS LIT
COUNT-IN
PART A
PART C
CHORUS
BREAK
CHORUS 2
PART R
BREAK 2
OUTRO
7 groovesJCS1AR+2Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 4
FILL · 3
LAND · 3
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
LINK · 1
SECTION · 4
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Your Best American Girl on drums

65 bars of 4/4 at a walking 77 BPM, 3:13 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
77 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
65
LENGTH
3:13
DIFFICULTY
36/100

silence through bars 1-8, ride through bars 9-12, hi-hat through bars 13-24, ride through bars 25-27, snare through bars 28-34 and hi-hat through bars 35-39, and 6 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 28-34, 36-38 and 45-47 -- 24.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    28
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
CC |x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-x---x-|
Your Best American Girl -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

3 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 48 and 3 more.

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 -- J, C -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- P (a two-bar phrase) -- 5 exercises, about 32 minutes.
  3. Bars 13-53 -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Bars 44-61 -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 1 exercise, about 10 minutes. Open above.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Your Best American Girl?

77 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 Your Best American Girl hard to play on drums?

36 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 23 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

65 bars, about 3:13 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 17 exercises over 5 sittings, about 25 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, 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 Your Best American Girl?

3 fills to learn, played 9 times: bars 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 48 and 3 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 65 BARS ANALYSED