Prison Song · System of a Down

154 bars at 189 BPM -- fast, and 3:16 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

MetalRock150 BPM and upIntermediate
TEMPO
189 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
154
LENGTH
3:16
DIFFICULTY
67/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 30% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 23-30, 35-38 and 55-62, and 4 more places -- 29.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 189 BPM
PRISON SONG · BAR 35
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 154.

LOOP · 189 BPM
BAR 154
EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

154 bars across 18 sections: 109 keep time, 1 is a fill, 11 are stops and 13 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 100-121.

PART S1
CHORUS
VERSE
CHORUS 3
VERSE 2
CHORUS 4
PART M
PART P
VERSE 3
CHORUS 6
8 groovesEHMS1F+3Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Prison Song?

189 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 Prison Song hard to play on drums?

67 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 34 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

154 bars, about 3:16 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 32 exercises over 12 sittings, about 23 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 Prison Song?

1 fill to learn, played 1 time: bar 154.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 154 BARS ANALYSED
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