Aidan

Here‘s the sheet music for Spanish Joint. Learn as much or as little as you’d like. Try playing along to as much of the recording as you can.

I haven’t notated every part of the song because a lot of it is heavily improvised (e.g., at the end of choruses). We can learn how to improvise in these sections in a future lesson.

You’ll notice that for the chorus beat, the ride cymbal isn’t playing every eighth note. After giving the song another listen, I realized that Questlove is largely improvising his ride pattern. The ride pattern I’ve included in the sheet music compliments the bass drum and snare drum parts nicely, and it doesn’t require you to build hand speed beforehand to play it.