Heavy Rotation · AKB48

202 bars at 177 BPM -- fast, and 4:33 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

Pop150 BPM and up
TEMPO
177 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
202
LENGTH
4:33
DIFFICULTY
52/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 45% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2, 7-13 and 15-17, and 22 more places -- 44.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

LOOP · 177 BPM
HEAVY ROTATION · BAR 8
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

9 fills to learn, played 27 times: bars 6, 14, 28, 36, 44, 52 and 21 more.

LOOP · 177 BPM
BAR 6 · LANDS ON BAR 7 · PLAYED 3 TIMES
LOOP · 177 BPM
BAR 14 · LANDS ON BAR 15 · PLAYED 9 TIMES
LOOP · 177 BPM
BAR 28 · LANDS ON BAR 29 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 177 BPM
BAR 36 · LANDS ON BAR 37 · PLAYED 2 TIMES

5 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

202 bars across 13 sections: 125 keep time, 27 are fills and 34 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 150-156.

CHORUS
PART H
CHORUS 2
PART H
CHORUS 3
PART S
OUTRO
5 groovesBHSCJFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Heavy Rotation?

177 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 Heavy Rotation hard to play on drums?

52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 25 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

202 bars, about 4:33 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 35 exercises over 11 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Heavy Rotation?

9 fills to learn, played 27 times: bars 6, 14, 28, 36, 44, 52 and 21 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 202 BARS ANALYSED
AT THIS LEVEL

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