Shadows Follow · Metallica

272 bars at 168 BPM -- fast, and 6:29 of it without a break -- on crash, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

Metal150 BPM and upIntermediate
TEMPO
168 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
272
LENGTH
6:29
DIFFICULTY
58/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 29% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 30-44, 46 and 50, and 24 more places -- 28.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 168 BPM
SHADOWS FOLLOW · BAR 30
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE FILLS

Where it comes off the beat

8 fills to learn, played 26 times: bars 25, 26, 27, 28, 127, 128 and 20 more.

LOOP · 168 BPM
BARS 25-28 · LANDS ON BAR 29 · PLAYED 4 TIMES
LOOP · 168 BPM
BARS 127-130 · LANDS ON BAR 131 · PLAYED 4 TIMES
LOOP · 168 BPM
BARS 137-138 · LANDS ON BAR 139 · PLAYED 2 TIMES
LOOP · 168 BPM
BAR 146 · LANDS ON BAR 147 · PLAYED 4 TIMES

4 more fills are written out on the fills page.

EVERY FILL, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

272 bars across 19 sections: 174 keep time, 26 are fills and 46 are stops. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 171-193.

PART A
CHORUS
PART H
PART H
CHORUS 5
PART K
OUTRO
9 groovesGKHAC+4Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Shadows Follow?

168 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 Shadows Follow hard to play on drums?

58 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?

272 bars, about 6:29 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 52 exercises over 14 sittings, about 26 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, 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 Shadows Follow?

8 fills to learn, played 26 times: bars 25, 26, 27, 28, 127, 128 and 20 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 272 BARS ANALYSED
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