MEGADETH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Sweating Bullets (original)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 34-40, 42-46 and 68-74, and 4 more places -- 21.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
165 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
204
LENGTH
4:57
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 165 BPM
SWEATING BULLETS (ORIGINAL) · BARS 34-35

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 56 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 60 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 107 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  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, hi-hat 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 107, 127, 146 and 165 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 Sweating Bullets (original) use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 165 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 34-40, 42-46, 68-74 and 76-80, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Sweating Bullets (original) hard?

56 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 204 BARS ANALYSED