MEGADETH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Rust In Peace... Polaris

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 41-43, 45-47 and 49-51, and 9 more places -- 17.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
157 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
214
LENGTH
5:21
DIFFICULTY
86/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 157 BPM
RUST IN PEACE... POLARIS · BARS 41-42

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 74 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 86 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 86 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 86, 104, 122, 139 and 157 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does Rust In Peace... Polaris use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 157 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 41-43, 45-47, 49-51 and 53-55, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Rust In Peace... Polaris hard?

74 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 86 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 214 BARS ANALYSED