How to Play Mustang Sally on Drums (Beginner Step-by-Step Guide)
- Rob Bishop
- May 28
- 5 min read
Updated: May 29
Quick Answer: Mustang Sally on drums is a lesson in groove which is stripped back and accessible for beginners at grade 1 level, but the real challenge is staying in the right place throughout the song, nailing a dead stop at exactly the right moment, and executing a two beat end fill with bass drum and snare playing as one.
#Why Mustang Sally Is a Rite of Passage for Beginner Drummers
Some songs teach you groove. Some songs teach you fills. Mustang Sally teaches you discipline.
This Wilson Pickett’s classic has been chosen as one of the Trinity Rock and Pop grade 1 songs and is one of those songs that sounds deceptively simple from the outside. The groove is straightforward. The tempo is steady. But put a beginner drummer behind the kit and ask them to play through the full arrangement, and the cracks appear almost immediately.
The reason? Counting bars.
This is the skill that separates drummers who can play beats from drummers who can actually play songs. And Mustang Sally will expose any weakness in that area very quickly.
If you have already worked through How to Play Another One Bites the Dust on Drums you will have had your first introduction to counting bars. Mustang Sally takes that skill and puts it under serious pressure.
The Groove: Stripped Back for a Reason
The Grade 1 beginner version of Mustang Sally uses a simplified arrangement of the original. The groove has been stripped back to its foundations deliberately, and that is not a criticism. It is the point.
Another One bites the Dust - Main Groove
With a more complex groove, your attention would be split between playing the beat and tracking your position in the song. By keeping the groove simple, your full concentration can go where it needs to go: counting.
You will be playing the same groove for extended sections, sometimes eight bars, sometimes more. It can feel repetitive. That feeling is the test. The moment you stop counting because the groove has become automatic is the moment you lose your place.
Do not let the groove become automatic. Count every single bar.
The Stop: The Most Important Single Note in the Song
After all of those repeated bars of groove, the song arrives at a single quarter note on the snare. Dead stop. One note.
This is the moment the song has been building toward, and it is where most beginners either fall apart or prove they have been counting properly.
I have watched students do all of that work, all of those bars of concentrated careful playing, and then either sail straight past the stop or grind to a halt several bars too early. Both versions happen more often than you would think, and both have the same cause: the bars were not being counted precisely enough.
If you nail the stop, you have done something genuinely difficult. Own that.
The Rest: Counting Silence
After the stop comes something that catches almost every beginner off guard: a bar and a half of rest.
You are counting silence now. Just you, the count, and the knowledge that a two beat fill is coming to bring you back in.
Dead stop on beat 1, then a 2 beat fill to guide you to the end.
Say the count out loud if you need to. There is no shame in it. Counting out loud during practice is one of the most effective habits you can build, and this moment in Mustang Sally is a perfect reason to develop it early.
If you struggle with staying in time during rests and transitions, the article on why you cannot keep time on drums is worth reading alongside this one.
Once you have counted through the rest accurately, the two beat fill arrives and brings you back into the main groove. From there you are heading toward the end of the song.
The End Fill: Deceptively Simple, Easy to Get Wrong
The end fill looks straightforward on paper. It is a two beat 16th note fill on the snare, which at this stage you will have encountered before. If you have already worked through Another One Bites the Dust , the subdivision concept will be familiar.
The complication is the bass drum. Beats 2 and 4 of the fill have bass drum notes landing with the snare. The temptation is to let those moments flam, meaning the two drums land just slightly apart rather than exactly together.
That flam will cost you. The bass drum and snare need to land as one. Locked, precise, simultaneous.
Practice this slowly. Isolate the two beat fill and repeat it until the bass drum and snare are genuinely together on those beats. Do not move to full tempo until that coordination is clean.
Then, on the following beat 1, the song ends with a single snare and bass drum together.
A clean ending to a song that has demanded precision throughout.
What Mustang Sally Is Teaching You
By the time you have worked through this song properly, you will have developed three things that will stay with you for your entire drumming life.
Bar counting under pressure. Not just counting when the groove is interesting, but counting through repetition, through stops, and through silence.
Rest awareness. The ability to count bars of silence and re-enter at exactly the right moment.
Coordination precision. Landing bass drum and snare simultaneously rather than approximately.
These are not beginner skills in the sense of being easy. They are foundational skills in the sense of being permanent. Every song you play from this point forward will require all three.
Mustang Sally is a tricky piece to get right. It is very easy to get wrong. But when you nail it, you will know that something real has shifted in your playing.
#Learn Mustang Sally in Full Inside The Beginner Drum Course
In The Beginner Drum Course, every section of Mustang Sally is broken down bar by bar with clear notation so you always know exactly where you are in the song. The stop, the rest, the end fill — all of it is covered in detail.
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Not ready yet? Download the free starter pack and start building your foundation today.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Is Mustang Sally hard to play on drums?
The groove itself is not technically difficult. The challenge is counting bars accurately throughout the song, nailing a dead stop at the right moment, and executing an end fill with bass drum and snare landing precisely together. Simple to understand, demanding to execute correctly.
What is the drum groove in Mustang Sally?
The beginner version uses a stripped back groove designed to keep the focus on counting and song structure rather than technical complexity. The simplicity of the groove is intentional — it frees your attention for the harder job of tracking your position in the song.
Why is counting bars so important in Mustang Sally?
The song has extended sections of repeated groove followed by a single quarter note dead stop. If you have not been counting bars precisely, you will either miss the stop entirely or arrive at it too early. Counting bars is the core skill this song is built around.
What is the end fill in Mustang Sally?
The end fill is a two beat 16th note pattern on the snare with bass drum landing on beats 2 and 4. The key challenge is landing the bass drum and snare simultaneously rather than letting them flam. The song closes on beat 1 with a single snare and bass drum together.
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