Die With A Smile by Lady Gaga & Bruno Mars · Mint

102 bars of 6/4 -- not four -- at 158 BPM, 3:52 of playing on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

TEMPO

158 BPM

TIME

6/4

BARS

102

LENGTH

3:52

DIFFICULTY

38/100

silence through bars 1-12, hi-hat through bars 13-20, ride through bars 21-30, toms through bars 31-34, hi-hat through bars 35-54 and ride through bars 55-64, and 2 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 21-23, 25-27 and 29-30, and 3 more places -- 28.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    21                       22
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a6e+a
CC |x-----------------------|------------------------|
RD |----x---x---x---x---x---|x---x---x---x---x---x---|
SD |------g-----x-----g-----|------g-----x-----------|
BD |x---------x-----------x-|x---------x-----x---x---|

4 fills to learn, played 11 times: bars 20, 24, 28, 31, 32, 38 and 5 more.

It cuts the song into 20 exercises -- the grooves, the fills, and the joins between sections, which is where players actually come off -- and puts them in the order a teacher would. Each one opens on a reduction you can already play and adds the notes back a rung at a time, with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

1. The grooves the song is built on -- E -- 5 exercises, about 23 minutes. Open above.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- K, C (a two-bar phrase) -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
3. Through Part A and Part E -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
4. Through Part E and Part K -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes.
5. Through Part K -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
6. The whole song -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.