hey, welcome to 12tone!
System of a Down is one of the most beloved metal bands of the last thirty years.
like, the metal community practically prides itself on infighting about which bands are
overrated and which ones are actually good, but I don't think I've ever met a metalhead
that doesn't like System of a Down.
they managed to break into the mainstream without losing any of their edge: they're
provocateurs, political activists, unafraid to tackle difficult subjects, critique the
powerful, and put a voice to the struggles of the oppressed. over the course of their
20-something year career they've maintained a truly unique musical voice: no one sounds
like System of a Down.
no one.
they've got a lot of amazing songs to talk about, and I'm sure this won't be my last
video on them, but today I wanted to look at probably their most famous track, the dark
but playfully titled Chop Suey! let's take it apart.
(tick, tick, tick, tick, tock)
the song starts like this: (bang) with Daron Malakian on an acoustic guitar, laying out
a progression that feels surprisingly disorienting for such simple chords.
how does it do that?
well, it all comes down to root motion.
going from G minor to A minor, the root moves by whole step, then A minor to F is a major
3rd, F to Eb is another whole step, and Eb back to G minor is another major 3rd. we're
just alternating between these two intervals, but when it comes to harmony, not all intervals
are created equal.
motion by step tends to feel fairly strong, and it creates a sense of landing on the second
chord.
motion by 3rd, on the other hand, is generally considered the weakest harmonic motion: the
chords feel connected, but there's no sense of direction to it.
neither one establishes itself as the harmonic focus.
but alternating between strong and weak root motion isn't new.
most chord progressions alternate between strong and weak root motion.
no, the trick here isn't that they're doing it, it's where they're doing it.
again, strong motion tends to draw attention to the chord you're going to, but in Chop
Suey!, those are the 2nd and 4th chords in the loop, which, rhythmically speaking, are
the weakest positions.
this creates a mismatch: the harmony tells us these are the important chords, but the
rhythm says it's these.
you're getting conflicting information, which makes it feel unstable.
in fact, it's so unstable that you might expect your ear to adjust and start hearing A minor
as the real start of the loop.
I mean, it's not unheard of to start a chord loop in the middle: you're going in circles
anyway, so you can kinda just hop in wherever you want.
keeping G minor as the perceived root is a delicate balancing act, which they accomplish
in a couple ways.
first, whenever they add new instruments, it's always on that chord, reinforcing its
position at the start.
but even if we just consider the first statement of the loop, the two emphasized chords are
a tritone apart, and that dissonance makes it hard to hear either of them as the root
of the key. and finally, if you listen carefully, you can hear the same low G underneath every
one of Malakian's chord voicings.
this is called a drone, and it means that every chord except G minor feels a bit unstable
over it, keeping that root just strong enough to make everything else super confusing.
from there we get this: (bang) where Malakian overdubs an electric guitar playing the root
and third of each chord. this draws some attention away from the drone and onto the progression
itself, but more importantly, the introduction of an electric guitar, especially such a heavily
distorted one, serves as a signal of what's to come: sure, there's an acoustic, but this
is not a folk song.
I also want to talk about the rhythm here, 'cause it's playing a really cool pattern
called a double tresillo. in a normal tresillo, you take 8 beats and, instead of splitting
them into groups of 2, you split them into groups of 3 instead.
since 3 doesn't evenly divide 8, though, you have to chop off the end of your last group,
giving you this lopsided 3-3-2-3-3-2 rhythm.
the double tresillo doubles that, for a full pattern of 3-3-3-3-2-2.
it adds some extra rhythmic interest, like we're accelerating into each chord transition.
this was there in the acoustic as well, but since the electric is playing a riff instead
of just a strum pattern, it's a little more obvious and, thus, dramatic.
from there we layer in more instruments: (bang) and things start to get really interesting.
our electric rhythm's gotten a bit more complex, and it's joined by John Dolmayan's drums playing
a powerful, primal beat based on the same double tresillo pattern, but the part that
stands out the most is that fast, high guitar line.
if you listen to it on its own: (bang) it honestly sounds really sloppy: he's kinda
playing triplets, but it doesn't really line up with the rest of the band.
its sounds like he's just strumming as fast as he can instead of playing to any particular
tempo.
it even misses some of the chord transitions, sliding in late like it didn't notice everyone
else had left it behind.
on paper, this part is kind of a mess, but in the context of the whole song, it sounds
amazing.
it gives the section this frantic, chaotic energy that you just couldn't get with a cleaner
line.
there's so much rhythmic tension that Malakian has to step outside the confines of the song's
meter in order to express it.
this is one of the most important lessons of the punk movement, and one System of a
Down puts to great use: sloppy isn't the same thing as bad.
you just have to know how to use it.
and finally, I want to talk about Shavo Odadjian's bass part: (bang) because that's… not the
chord progression.
I mean, it lines up sometimes: we get a G under the G chord and an Eb under the Eb chord,
but under A minor we get another Eb, which is the chord's tritone, and under F we get
Bb, the perfect 4th. they're both pretty dissonant notes that don't really fit with the chord
everyone else is playing.
why?
well, I'm gonna set this aside for now but don't worry, we'll come back to it because
trust me, this pays off.
moving on, though, this intro has been building up a lot of tension, which finally gets released
as we move into the interlude.
(bang) here, we drop the double tresillo pattern, and it never really comes back.
that rhythm was there to drive us into the song, but now that we're here we don't need
it anymore.
in its place we get this really heavy strumming pattern, with a faster harmonic rhythm.
instead of changing chords once per bar, we now change twice, so the whole loop goes twice
as fast.
or, actually… ok, so here's the thing: each chord here is actually two different chords.
like, this first one is alternating between an Ab power chord and a G power chord. it's
so fast that it all sort of blends together into one harmonic object, but because of the
rapid changing back and forth it's hard to nail down exactly which chord you're actually
hearing.
it's like a harmonic superposition: I can hear this as an Ab chord or a G chord, depending
on which one I'm listening for.
this means that trying to work out exactly what this chord progression is is kinda pointless,
but we can still make some observations about its shape.
it starts on or around G, drops down a step, then turns and shoots back up.
this is interesting because it's the opposite of the shape from the intro: there we started
on G, stepped up, then jumped down.
it's not a strict inversion: the intro went up a whole step whereas here we're going down
a half-step instead, but the overall trajectory is the same, just upside-down.
this connects the two sections, so they feel like they belong in the same song even though
the actual parts sound pretty different.
after that, they settle into this: (bang) which is basically the same but they've picked
a note.
now we're just playing G a bunch, then F#, A, and C. once that we have that, we can project
it back onto the progression from the first half, giving us a better sense of which chords
we were supposed to be hearing.
it's a slightly confusing answer, though: in the first three cases, they settled on
the lower of the two chords, but on the last one, instead of the Bb we'd expect from that
pattern, we get a C. why the shift?
well, the short answer is because they can, but that's not very satisfying so let's look
at how it works.
the first thing to recognize here is that, while most of the trills are moving by half-step,
like Ab to G or G to F#, the last one moves between C and Bb, which is a whole step.
this kinda weakens the connection between the two: in the half-step version, you get
the sense that you're sliding in for a landing on the lower note, but with a whole step that's
not as strong so the Bb feels more like just decoration. this makes the C more prominent
within that blurry voicing, so pulling it out for our second riff doesn't feel wrong.
the other thing to note, though, is that C just makes a better melody here: with it,
the riff outlines a tritone, and metal loves tritones.
playing a Bb wouldn't sound as good: (bang) so they take advantage of the ambiguity of
the first riff in order to choose the better note.
eventually, that builds up into the verse: (bang) which is probably the most iconic part
of the song, built on a really tight start-stop pattern.
everyone's playing in perfect sync with Serj Tankian's vocals, leaving complete silence
in between the lyrics.
well, silence except for some whispered echoes on some of the lines, but instrumentally it's
entirely empty.
this gives it a really powerful, punchy effect, especially after the crowded sections we just
heard, and it draws your attention not just to the words Tankian is singing, but the way
in which he's singing it.
in effect, the entire band becomes a part of his vocal inflection.
he's not singing over a band, he's singing as the band.
honestly, though, it almost doesn't sound like he's singing at all.
I'd be willing to bet that, when you sing along to this song, a lot of you just do this
whole section on a single note.
that's not what Tankian does: the melody is an elaboration of that chord trill from the
intro, first alternating between Ab and G, then dropping down to G and F#, but if you're
not specifically listening for that, it's easy to miss for a couple reasons.
first, we don't get the other two trills, so this whole section spans the range of a
major 2nd. that's tiny, and it's almost exclusively moving by half-step too.
then there's the rhythm: it's delivered as a constant barrage of 16th notes at around
130 BPM, which is really fast for a vocal line, making the melodic nuances hard to pick
out. and of course there's the vocal delivery itself, which has a very shouty tone it.
combine all that with the jaggedness of the start-stop pattern, and this section takes
on a raw, almost violent quality to it, sounding less like a musical performance and more like
a primal scream.
half-way through, it softens up a bit, with Dolmayan's drums switching to a more traditional
groove and Tankian adding some extra vocal decorations in between the lines.
specifically, he starts shouting "you wanted to" a bunch.
this helps bring us back to something a little more familiar, but it also ramps up the heaviness
of the section, building up into the chorus: (bang) which, yeah. this is a signature part
of System of a Down's songwriting: sudden dynamic shifts.
we're going from the big, thrashy verse with its crashing drums and heavy, stop-time guitars
into this much softer chorus.
it's even in half-time, which means they've cut the tempo in half here, and the whole
shift is done without any warning whatsoever.
they just pull the rug out from under us and suddenly instead of screaming, Tankian is
singing this soft lament about angels.
it's an interesting reversal: most of the time, the chorus is the biggest part of the
song, the thing we're building up to, but here it feels more like a reprieve from the
intensity of the verse.
as for what they're playing here, Malakian's doing an arpeggiated version of the progression
from the intro, complete with that same low-G drone.
there's also another arpeggio being played by a bouzouki, which is a guitar-like instrument
used in Meditarranean music.
it's another acoustic sound, which again helps tie us back to the beginning, in contrast
to the deeply distorted, electric sounds of the interlude and verse. and hey, while we're
here, let's check in on Odadjian.
(bang) oh. it's that line again.
don't worry, we'll get there.
before that, though, this section ends with another sudden shift, jumping right back into
the heavy interlude with its indeterminate chord trills, again with absolutely no warning.
this time, though, it ramps up the intensity even more: instead of collapsing to that single-note
line, we end with a full bar of the Ab trill (bang) while Tankian just wordlessly screams
on top, before falling back into the verse. it's the longest we've heard them hold a single
trill, and it sounds epic.
from there we go through the verse and chorus again, but this time, instead of going back
to the big, angry interlude, the chorus ends like this: (bang) creating almost like a moment
of silence to commemorate the deaths Tankian is singing about.
it's an acknowledgment of the tragedy inherent in the song, replacing the mindless rage with
a sense of introspection and remorse. and then we go back to the big, angry interlude.
(bang) I mean, look: just 'cause something's sad doesn't mean you can't be mad about it
too.
when death is unjust, anger and sorrow are both valid responses.
this interlude is a bit different, though, because partway through Tankian starts singing
over it, turning it into a sort of bridge.
taking a previously instrumental section and adding vocals on top is a great way to reuse
musical material to keep your song feeling coherent as it builds: you don't always need
to write a new section if you've already got something that'll work.
it's such a chaotic section that Tankian screaming bible verses over it almost collapses the
entire thing, but they manage to keep it just stable enough by switching to the single-note
version as his melody gets more complicated, so the whole thing just feels like a bomb
is about to explode and then, at the last second, the rug gets pulled out from under
us again with another sudden dynamic shift: (bang) which…
wow, that's powerful.
let me explain.
Chop Suey is a song about death, and the legacies we leave behind.
this section consists of three chords: G minor, the I chord, Eb, the bVI, and Bb, the bIII.
these three chords all have what's called tonic function, which means they're the most
stable points in the key.
they provide a sense of rest, and the song ends with almost a minute of just tonic function
chords. it's the end of the road, the final resting place.
in the context of the song, it feels like an acknowledgment of mortality: the one thing
that unites humanity is that, eventually, we're all gonna die.
maybe it's better to judge people not by how they died, but by how they lived, because
in the end, they don't care what you think.
they're dead.
they're never gonna know.
the people that judgment hurts are the ones they left behind.
that's why, in the song's most iconic line, it's not the angels who're crying: it's us.
but you may be thinking "hold up, that chord progression sounds familiar.
haven't I heard it before?" and yes, you're absolutely right.
you have heard this before, in the bass part in the intro, and again in the chorus.
this musical embrace of human mortality isn't just an ending, it's been with us the whole
time.
it's underpinning the entire song, just under the surface, not quite center stage but always
lurking at the edges, because death isn't just something that comes for us at the end
of our lives: it's what defines our lives.
we can't escape it any more than we can escape ourselves, and System of a Down perfectly
encapsulates that message with a simple bass part that doesn't quite fit... until suddenly
it does.
I told you this would pay off.
anyway, that's it for the song but before we go there's something I need to say and,
quick content warning, it's about police brutality.
no drawings here, I don't want to trivialize the message.
I chose this song about a month ago, long before the recent eruption of protests in
response to the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officers, but System of
a Down has always been a band that was vocal about their politics: Chop Suey's not the
best example, but on the same album you have things like Prison Song about the prison industrial
complex and the war on drugs, and Toxicity, which is, itself, a protest anthem. in that
spirit, I want to voice my full support for the protestors: police brutality against black
communities is one of the greatest ongoing atrocities in America, and it needs to be
resisted with every resource we have.
George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, and so many more have had their
lives cut tragically short with little to no repercussions for the perpetrators, and
the fight to make sure no more names are added to that list is a just and noble cause.
in short, black lives matter, and police showing up to peaceful protests with full-on riot
gear only demonstrates just how necessary those protests are.
if you want to help, I put a link to the national bail fund network in the description, and
I'd strongly encourage you to donate if you have the means.
I've also linked to some other resources from the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as
Dr. Phillip Ewell's essays on music theory's white racial frame if you want to learn more
about how systemic racism affects our field, and what we as academic musicians can do to
combat it in our ranks. and this isn't just a right-now thing either: even if you're watching
this video months or years after it's published, odds are there's still plenty of work to be
done, so I'd still ask you to check out those resources and donate if you can.
beyond that, be safe, be smart, be compassionate, and hopefully together we can come out of
this with a better world for everyone.
and hey, no matter what happens, keep on rockin'.