System Of A Down - Chop Suey! - Guitar Lesson

About Chop Suey!

Few songs throw rhythm guitar players into the deep end quite like "Chop Suey!" Tuned down to Eb Standard, System Of A Down build the track around a riff that constantly shifts feel, lurching between explosive palm-muted chugs and open, ringing chords in C# minor. The right hand is where most of the work lives: keeping your pick attack tight and your muting consistent while the tempo and dynamics swing dramatically takes real control. At 120 BPM the individual notes are not impossibly fast, but the rhythmic accuracy demanded to lock in with the stop-start accents is genuinely tricky. The verse picking pattern in particular catches players off guard because it sits slightly against where you expect the beat to land. Use the Practice Toolbar to loop that section slowed down until the picking pattern feels natural before bringing it back up to speed. The Alternative Rock genre rarely asks this much of a rhythm guitarist, which is exactly what makes this one worth working through properly.

• The song is tuned to Eb Standard, so drop all six strings one semitone before you start or your chord shapes will clash with the recording.
• The signature riff relies heavily on tight palm muting followed by sudden open-chord releases, so practise switching between the two cleanly at a slow tempo first.
• The verse rhythm pattern sits against a straightforward beat, making precise right-hand timing the main technical challenge rather than left-hand fretting.