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The Skull Beneath The Skin · Megadeth

EXERCISE 15 OF 51
Join Part C to Part P (bars 32-34)
75 / 134 BARS COVERED
0 / 51 PASSED · 3 BARS LIT · IN THE PART C, PART P
COUNT-IN
PART C
PART P
PART T
PART Y
VERSE
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
9 groovesAKCPTAH+4Fill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 9
FILL · 11
LAND · 11
RUN · 3
JOIN · 6
LINK · 3
SECTION · 7
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play The Skull Beneath The Skin on drums

134 bars of 4/4 at 120 BPM, about 4:28 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick.

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
134
LENGTH
4:28
DIFFICULTY
63/100

silence through bars 1-9, hi-hat through bars 10-11, snare through bars 12-19, ride through bars 20-27, snare through bars 28-31 and hi-hat through bars 32-47, and 4 more changes after that.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 90-96, 98-100 and 102-104, and 4 more places -- 29.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

    90
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
RD |--x---x---x---x-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx|
The Skull Beneath The Skin -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

11 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 16 more.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 39 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 -- AK -- 4 exercises, about 25 minutes.
  2. The grooves the song is built on -- P, C -- 3 exercises, about 30 minutes.
  3. Through Part C -- 7 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  4. Through Part C and Part P -- 5 exercises, about 20 minutes. Open above.
  5. Through Part P and Part T -- 5 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  6. Through Part T and Part Y -- 4 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  7. Through Part T and Part Y -- 3 exercises, about 13 minutes.
  8. Through Part Y and Part AC -- 3 exercises, about 27 minutes.
  9. and 5 more sittings after that.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is The Skull Beneath The Skin?

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 The Skull Beneath The Skin 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 54 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

134 bars, about 4:28 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 39 exercises over 13 sittings, about 24 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

How many fills are in The Skull Beneath The Skin?

11 fills to learn, played 22 times: bars 19, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27 and 16 more.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 134 BARS ANALYSED