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Light Up The Sky · Van Halen

EXERCISE 1 OF 13
Groove C -- Chorus
0 / 160 BARS COVERED
0 / 13 PASSED · 104 BARS LIT
CHORUS
CHORUS 2
BREAK 2
CHORUS 3
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCS5AS1S3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 3
FILL · 1
LAND · 1
RUN · 1
JOIN · 4
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Light Up The Sky on drums

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

48 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
197 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
160
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
48/100

silence through bars 1-4, hi-hat through bars 5-16, snare through bars 17-18, hi-hat through bars 19-34, snare through bars 35-36 and hi-hat through bars 37-42, and 15 more changes after that.

The beat

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.

    5
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o---o---o---o---|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-x---x---x---x-|
Light Up The Sky -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

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

What the course does

It cuts the song into 11 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 -- C -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes. Open above.
  2. Bars 43-131 -- 5 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  3. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 25 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

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