War Ensemble · Slayer

246 bars at 205 BPM -- fast, and 4:47 of it without a break -- on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

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

TEMPO

205 BPM

TIME

4/4

BARS

246

LENGTH

4:47

DIFFICULTY

90/100

kick and crashes through bars 1-8, ride through bars 9-24, hi-hat through bars 25-40, kick and crashes through bars 41-43, toms through bars 44-45 and kick and crashes through bars 46-50, and 13 more changes after that.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-31, 33-39 and 51-53, and 5 more places -- 16.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

    26
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-|
SD |--x---x---x---x-|
BD |x---xx--x---xx--|

23 fills to learn, played 42 times: bars 8, 12, 16, 23, 24, 32 and 36 more.

It cuts the song into 74 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 -- K -- 1 exercise, about 19 minutes.
2. The grooves the song is built on -- H -- 1 exercise, about 20 minutes.
3. The grooves the song is built on -- Q -- 4 exercises, about 24 minutes.
4. Through Part E -- 6 exercises, about 37 minutes.
5. Bars 13-32 -- 7 exercises, about 30 minutes.
6. Bars 40-67 -- 8 exercises, about 27 minutes.
7. Through Part Q and the Chorus 2 -- 4 exercises, about 31 minutes. Open above.
8. Through the Chorus 2 and Part E -- 7 exercises, about 31 minutes.
9. and 11 more sittings after that.