Light Up The Sky · Van Halen

160 bars at 197 BPM -- fast, and 3:14 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare and kick.

RockMetal150 BPM and up
TEMPO
197 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
160
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
48/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 77% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-16, 19-34 and 37-42, and 7 more places -- 76.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

LOOP · 197 BPM
LIGHT UP THE SKY · BAR 5
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 158 and 159.

LOOP · 197 BPM
BARS 158-159 · LANDS ON BAR 160 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

160 bars across 8 sections: 123 keep time, 2 are fills, 8 are stops and 24 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 18-34.

CHORUS
CHORUS 2
BREAK 2
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCS5AS1S3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Light Up The Sky?

197 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 Light Up The Sky hard to play on drums?

48 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 42 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

160 bars, about 3:14 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 11 exercises over 3 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

How many fills are in Light Up The Sky?

1 fill to learn, played 2 times: bars 158 and 159.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 160 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Van Halen drum parts

EVERY VAN HALEN CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →