Souls To Deny · Suffocation

196 bars at 203 BPM -- fast, and 4:15 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

99 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

TEMPO

203 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

196

LENGTH

4:15

DIFFICULTY

99/100

toms through bar 1, ride through bars 2-17, hi-hat through bars 18-27, ride through bars 28-35, silence through bars 36-38 and toms through bars 39-41, and 11 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-4, 6-8 and 28-30, and 5 more places -- 13.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    2
    1...........2...........3...........4...........5...........6...........
RD |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|
SD |x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----x-----|
BD |x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--x--|

6 fills to learn, played 19 times: bars 17, 82, 83, 84, 96, 105 and 13 more.

It cuts the song into 44 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 -- B -- 1 exercise, about 22 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 1 exercise, about 23 minutes. Open above.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- N -- 2 exercises, about 26 minutes.
4. Through Part B -- 2 exercises, about 17 minutes.
5. Through Part B and Part E -- 3 exercises, about 33 minutes.
6. Through Part E -- 4 exercises, about 26 minutes.
7. Through Part E and Part B -- 4 exercises, about 28 minutes.
8. Bars 34-48 -- 2 exercises, about 28 minutes.
9. and 9 more sittings after that.