Afterlife · Dream Theater

220 bars at 160 BPM -- fast, and 5:28 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

ProgressiveRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
220
LENGTH
5:28
DIFFICULTY
67/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 17% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 26, 28 and 30, and 26 more places -- 16.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

LOOP · 160 BPM
AFTERLIFE · BAR 90
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

16 fills to learn, played 35 times: bars 2, 20, 31, 33, 41, 45 and 29 more.

LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 2 · LANDS ON BAR 3 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 20 · LANDS ON BAR 21
LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 31 · LANDS ON BAR 32 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 160 BPM
BAR 33 · LANDS ON BAR 34

12 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

220 bars across 24 sections: 124 keep time, 35 are fills, 26 are stops and 1 is silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 115-128.

PART A
CHORUS
PART X
PART U
PART U
13 groovesLUFAAL+8Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Afterlife?

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

Is Afterlife hard to play on drums?

67 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 40 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

220 bars, about 5:28 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 78 exercises over 22 sittings, about 27 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Afterlife?

16 fills to learn, played 35 times: bars 2, 20, 31, 33, 41, 45 and 29 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 220 BARS ANALYSED
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