stormknight

Rush – Roll The Bones

Difficulties Expert+
59 15
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Mapper: stormknight

“Roll the Bones” is the title track of Rush’s 1991 album of the same name. Written by the whole band, it reflects on taking chances in life, and just going for it. The song peaked at #9 on the Billboard top 100, and the album peaked at #3. Roll the Bones marked the return of Rush to commercial success, having being unsuccessful with their previous album.

This is the song that introduced me to the band. It was also a tabletop role-playing game standard (go figure, rolling dice (“the bones”,) throughout game play.) I colored the map as close as I could to match the album color palate, but made concessions so the map is playable. Thus, bone and grey (for black,) represent dice and their pips, with sky blue, a pale sepia, and cloud white to complete the palate.

This map is my homage to Neil Peart, who died January 2020 from brain cancer. Rumor is that he never missed a beat in live concerts. He was the closest thing to a human metronome I’ve ever seen. The song tempo itself only varied +/-0.5bpm over the full 5:32 song!

Trivia: The rap bridge is actually vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee, with his voice deepened.

Special thanks to playtesters Sorukun, FelixMaeKnight, and CyanSnow. Special call out to TechButterfly for some advice. And special thanks to CyanSnow for color and touch-ups, who was just as passionate as I was to get this song out.

Enjoy!

Stats:
Difficulty: Expert+
Total Notes: 1755
Notes Per Second: 5.27
NJS: 18
Offset: 0.5
BPM: 111.19, +/-0.5bpm

Fun Factor0
Rhythm0
Flow0
Pattern Quality0
Readability0
Level Quality0
Comments (1)
  1. dadtheimpaler says:

    I see your maps and I think, “Is this the chosen one? The one who will map old school Genesis songs? Maybe…”
    😉

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