Got the blues? You’re not alone, Gary Moore has them too… and just for you!
Still got the blues (for you) is one of legendary guitarist Gary Moore’s most popular songs. The version in the video is the shorter version, the original is over 6 minutes long, this version is missing the last 2 minutes of guitar solo. If you only have the longer version, just continue jamming along at the end!
The tempo of this song is really slow – it’s at 55bpm. The song has an eighth note triplet feel and you can count time either as eighth note triplets (1 puh let, 2 puh let etc.) or as 12/8 (1 2 3 4 5 6 etc.). This tempo makes it a great song for you to try figuring out the drum part for yourself; that’s a skill you should work on developing.
Being able to listen to a song and figure out – at least roughly – what the drummer is doing is a skill that will really help you to learn songs quickly. These days it’s very tempting to just google for a drum score or a drum tab or find a youtube lesson on how to play the song, but by doing that you miss out on developing your listening skills. I would encourage you to at least have a go a trying to work it out first before turning to other sources.
I started learning drums before the internet was really a thing and if I wanted to learn a song, I had to listen to it (a lot), try and play it (a lot), make mistakes (a lot), make note of mistakes and try to correct them and then ask other drummers or my teacher for help on the bits I wasn’t sure of. The more I tried to do it, the better I got, the more my listening developed, the faster I could pick up songs & play the songs I wanted to play. Try it!
This song presents a few challenges:
1) The speed… it’s S L O W! Playing slow is hard! Luckily we’re playing triplet 8th notes here and not just regular 8th notes, that means there’s less space between the notes we’re playing and that helps with the time-keeping. Where the slow speed is really felt is during the breaks, the moments when we’re not playing. There’s one 2 bar break toward the end of the song (3:29 in the video); make sure you keep counting during this break; to begin with you may want to keep tapping the triplet hi-hat pattern on your leg to help you keep time. Also listen for help from the other instruments – take note of the bass note on beat 1 of the 2nd bar.
2) Unison figures…. at 4 points in the song you need to play triplet 8th notes with your right hand, left hand & bass drum simultaneously… practice this carefully and don’t flam!
3) The crashes…. there are a number of crashes in this song, during the guitar solo there are 3 in a row (2:45). If you have 2 crashes practice playing the 3 crashes L R L and R L R, see which feels best to you. Don’t just use one hand, practice crashing with your weaker hand. Listen to make sure your crash and bass drum are really together.
4) The fill at 2:05…
This fill features a 16th note triplet between the Puh & Let of 4. If you play the fill as notated above your right hand will play a nice smooth 8th note triplet – 4 puh let – and your left will play beat 4 and then the 16th note triplet between puh & let. You don’t need to count every note in the fill, you can just feel it. Listen to the fill and try to imitate it. If you still can’t get the rhythm, try saying 4-patti-cakes:
After you have tried to play the song on your own you can click here to check out this score courtesy of our friends at www.DrumLessonResources.com. Enjoy!
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