502 · Megadeth

107 bars at 159 BPM -- fast, and 2:42 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

MetalRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
159 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
107
LENGTH
2:42
DIFFICULTY
99/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 29% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 31-37, 59-65 and 76-82, and 1 more place -- 28.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 159 BPM
502 · BAR 32
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

107 bars across 8 sections: 86 keep time, 4 are stops and 9 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 56-82.

COUNT-IN
PART D
CHORUS
PART D
CHORUS 2
PART J
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesHDJS1IFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is 502?

159 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in thirty-second notes. At that speed the thirty-second notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is 502 hard to play on drums?

99 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 98 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

107 bars, about 2:42 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 21 exercises over 9 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 107 BARS ANALYSED
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