Cotton Tail
Duke Ellington · 1940
A study in maintaining fast rhythm-changes swing and setting up ensemble figures.
- Artist
- Duke Ellington
- Year
- 1940
- Genre
- big band
- Drummer
- Sonny Greer
- Tempo
- 230 bpm
- Time
- 4/4
- Feel
- swing
- Difficulty
- advanced
Drummer's Quick-Start
Practice tempos
Woodshed
138bpm
Building
184bpm
Target
230bpm
The feel
A swing in 4/4 around 230 BPM. It's fast — economy of motion is everything; speed comes from relaxation, not force.
What to watch
- •Lock the shuffle triplet; the #1 mistake is letting it straighten out as you speed up.
- •Advanced: isolate the single hardest bar and loop it slowly before ever playing along.
How to learn it
Well-known tutorials exist for this one — use the links below, and play along from your own copy.
Generated from this song's groove profile — analysis only, no notation. A human-reviewed AI brief with a full groove breakdown, key moments and song map replaces this as briefs roll out.
Learn it
Find drum tutorials on YouTube ↗iDrum links to where lessons already live — we don't host recordings or publish transcriptions. Play along from your own music.
Discussion
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