Empty Walls · Serj Tankian

149 bars at 162 BPM -- fast, and 3:40 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

MetalRock150 BPM and up
TEMPO
162 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
149
LENGTH
3:40
DIFFICULTY
57/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 26% of the song

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 20-40 and 60-72 -- 25.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 162 BPM
EMPTY WALLS · BARS 20-21
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

4 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 18, 42, 74, 98, 138, 147 and 1 more.

LOOP · 162 BPM
BAR 18 · LANDS ON BAR 19
LOOP · 162 BPM
BAR 42 · LANDS ON BAR 43 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 162 BPM
BAR 98 · LANDS ON BAR 99 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 162 BPM
BARS 147-148 · LANDS ON BAR 149 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

149 bars across 14 sections: 94 keep time, 7 are fills, 24 are stops and 17 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 21-41.

PART C
CHORUS
PART J
CHORUS 2
PART J
PART C
PART S10
PART N
BREAK
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
8 groovesFCKJN+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Empty Walls?

162 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 Empty Walls hard to play on drums?

57 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in 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?

149 bars, about 3:40 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 31 exercises over 8 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Empty Walls?

4 fills to learn, played 7 times: bars 18, 42, 74, 98, 138, 147 and 1 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 149 BARS ANALYSED
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