← SONGS

Sickening · Meshuggah

EXERCISE 1 OF 66
Groove F -- Part F (a two-bar phrase)
0 / 176 BARS COVERED
0 / 66 PASSED · 12 BARS LIT · IN THE PART F, PART N
COUNT-IN
PART F
PART N
CHORUS
BREAK
PART AU
PART BB
OUTRO
BREAK 2
10 groovesTNAUFS1+5Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 14
FILL · 15
LAND · 15
RUN · 2
JOIN · 8
LINK · 5
SECTION · 6
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Sickening on drums

176 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 6:11 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
176
LENGTH
6:11
DIFFICULTY
63/100

silence through bars 1-15, snare through bars 16-18, hi-hat through bars 19-35, ride through bars 36-43, hi-hat through bars 44-51 and ride through bars 52-59, and 17 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 20-21, 24-25 and 29-30, and 3 more places -- 8.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    20                   21
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a5e+a 1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o---o---o---o---o---|o---o---o---o---|
SD |----x-------x-------|x-------x-------|
BD |x-xx--x--x-----x--xx|--xxx-x--x--x-xx|
Sickening -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

15 fills to learn, played 71 times: bars 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 34 and 65 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 50 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 -- F -- 1 exercise, about 15 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- N, T -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Through Part N and the Chorus -- 6 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  4. Through Part F -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
  5. Through Part F -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Through Part F and Part N -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  7. Through Part N and the Chorus -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes.
  8. Through the Chorus -- 2 exercises, about 35 minutes.
  9. and 9 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Sickening?

120 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is Sickening hard to play on drums?

63 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 52 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

176 bars, about 6:11 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 50 exercises over 17 sittings, about 26 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 Sickening?

15 fills to learn, played 71 times: bars 25, 26, 27, 30, 31, 34 and 65 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 176 BARS ANALYSED