Learn to play Chop Suey! by System Of A Down on Drums
Featuring your favorite songs, Melodics creates bite-sized lessons that level up your skills on the drums.
Follow our step by step breakdown of Chop Suey! to listen to every part and learn how to play it yourself. Want to take your skills even further? Download the Melodics app where you can access hundreds of lessons, track every hit and measure your improvement.

Artist Biography
Hailing from California, System Of A Down is an alternative metal band known for their unique blend of heavy guitar riffs and eclectic songwriting. "Chop Suey!" is one of their signature tracks, featuring intricate drum patterns that match the intensity and passionate delivery of the song's lyrics. The band's drummer showcases impressive technicality, adding to the distinctiveness of their sound.
Explore more unique genres, styles and artists.
Intro
After the hi-hat and kick hit in the guitar intro, move to a repeating pattern across the toms. Finish this section with a buildup between mid tom and low tom.
Verse
Move to 1/4 notes on the open hi-hat for the first half of the verse. After 8 bars, play the hits between snare and open hi-hat. Return to the 1/4 note open hi-hat groove, and play a small fill before moving to the chorus.
Chorus
For the chorus, move to a half-time feel on the ride. After 8 bars, add more movement in the kick. Finish the song with hits following the rest of the band.
Combine and perform
Now combine these three sections to play the full arrangement.
Melodics is the best way to build your musical skills
FAQs
- System Of A Down's Chop Suey! is a great song for intermediate and advanced drummers to play. Download Melodics to break down the song and play other lessons and songs for all skill levels.
- Fast and precise double bass drumming for the intense sections, strong endurance to handle the high-energy and rapid drum patterns, ability to switch between different time signatures and maintain the song's unpredictable rhythm.
- 127 bpm
- 4/4
- G minor
You can navigate to where Songs are in Melodics via the [Explore] >[Songs] section of the app.
Anyone with Melodics and a MIDI drums, keys or pads instrument can browse and audio preview any song in the catalog for free. Currently, you must have a subscription for a Melodics Songs plan in order to access the learning and playing component of Songs lesson content.
- Melodics subscribers prior to our September 1st 2022 launch have a free upgrade to the Songs tier from your Standard plan (thanks for believing in us!). Missed the memo? Get in touch.
- For Standard Tier subscribers (post September 1st 2022) and Melodics free users: Check out Melodics’ plans to upgrade to Songs, visit melodics.com/plans
The high caliber to which our music team produce our renditions for each song and try to capture the original sound and spirit behind the music and artists is unparalleled in the world of music-learning apps.
It’s really important when you’re learning popular music that you get a proper chance to focus without distraction — that means no bad renditions, dinky instruments or shoddy vocal attempts allowed!
With Melodics, we want your experience of playing your favorite songs to feel authentic — like you’re sitting in with the band itself
Melodics launched Songs on September 1st, 2022 with 59 songs in the catalog. Across keys, pads and drums instruments, with multiple levels of difficulty for each song, that’s over 200 distinct lessons for songs to play, plus 1500+ lessons, exercises, courses and a Guided Path to get your skills up to speed!
We always have more Songs in production, and we’ll be doing more Song bundle drops regularly so the catalog grows and stays fresh.
We love to hear what the people want. The request line is always open! Drop us a line or get involved with the Melodics Facebook Community.
Songs are only available to Premium plan subscribers. As a free user you can preview songs and hear how they sound by hitting the lesson audio preview. If you’d like an idea of how learning songs with Melodics can benefit your broader musical journey, check out our article on navigating your learning journey.