Like A Sword Over Damocles · Trivium

283 bars at 210 BPM -- fast, and 5:23 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

MetalMetalcore / Hardcore150 BPM and up
TEMPO
210 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
283
LENGTH
5:23
DIFFICULTY
76/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 7% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 63-69, 104-110 and 250-252, and 1 more place -- 7.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

LOOP · 210 BPM
LIKE A SWORD OVER DAMOCLES · BAR 64
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

33 fills to learn, played 76 times: bars 1, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 70 more.

LOOP · 210 BPM
BAR 1 · LANDS ON BAR 2
LOOP · 210 BPM
BAR 5 · LANDS ON BAR 6
LOOP · 210 BPM
BARS 10-13 · LANDS ON BAR 14 · PLAYED 4 TIMES
LOOP · 210 BPM
BARS 15-19 · LANDS ON BAR 20 · PLAYED 5 TIMES

29 more fills are written out on the fills page.

THE SHAPE

How the song is built

283 bars across 30 sections: 159 keep time, 76 are fills, 11 are stops and 2 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 174-185.

PART AP
PART BB
CHORUS 3
22 groovesXBBACAFV+17Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Like A Sword Over Damocles?

210 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 Like A Sword Over Damocles hard to play on drums?

76 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for. The beat itself is 37 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

283 bars, about 5:23 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 127 exercises over 35 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

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

How many fills are in Like A Sword Over Damocles?

33 fills to learn, played 76 times: bars 1, 5, 10, 11, 12, 13 and 70 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 283 BARS ANALYSED
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