Kristofer Dahl5th April 2010Awesome Marcus - I am blown away by your riffing tightness once again, as well as the strength of this System composition. Great lesson!
Sergio Dorado5th April 2010Great work, Marcus! You have really good heavy sound, clean and agressive at the same time
Marius Bob5th April 2010great lesson Marcus.
Agressive sound and helpful explanations.
zen5th April 2010TIGHTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT RIFFIN !!!! SO INSPIRING .. thanks Marcus
Bogdan Radovic5th April 2010Amazing lesson Marcus! This is so tight and great sounding! Explanations are very clear too!
kaznie_NL5th April 2010Heavy and extremely cool!! I love that main riff m/
Marek Rojewski5th April 2010Wow this is greater than I've even expected
Alexiaden935th April 2010Finally a new lesson, Marcus!
Your rhythm and sound are really tight, and your guitar looks awesome...
m/_(T_T)_m/
Praetorian5th April 2010Marcus, that LP is GORGEOUS!
Ivan Milenkovic5th April 2010This lesson rocks man. Riff is played excellent, and explanations are awesome too. Really well made!
Lian Gerbino5th April 2010awesome and professional playing man! love your tightness! very well done!
ZakkWylde5th April 2010Nice Les Paul Supreme!
Crazy_Diamond5th April 2010NNNNIIIIICCCCEEEEE !!!! Thanks Marcus for this awesome song... SOAD is one of my greatest band ever and your riffing is really tight....
Piotr Kaczor5th April 2010Killer riffing, Marcus!
Adrian Figallo5th April 2010amazing marcus, really like the sound and that LP... NICE
shatterd5th April 2010Well I've been doing lots of lessons here on GMC but have not done any full song cover lessons yet. Well this is gonna be my first full song! Gonna start on this as soon as I finish my current lesson.
- shatterd5th April 2010
Maybe I'm wrong but when I listen to the original song, I think I'm hearing odd time signature???
Marcus Siepen5th April 2010Thanks a lot everybody
I love System of a Down, Mezmerize and Hypnotize are among my alltime fave albums, so this one was a lot of fun. Since many of you commented on my sound in this lesson, I used my Axe FX Ultra again, with 2 different distorted sounds. I recorded 2 rhythm tracks with one sound, panned them left and right, and recorded a third take with the second sound and panned it in the middle, I will upload the sound presets during the enxt days, so whoever wants to try them, just check my section here in the forum. Oh, and that Les paul is not a Supreme, it is a classic 
And about S.o.a.D.'s time signature, they didn't record that song with a click, so their tempo changes all the time, I played it with a click though cause I had to rpogram the drums 
Darknodar1235th April 2010Great lesson but I get the right sound when I hammer on/pull off on a different fret....
Whys that?- Darknodar1235th April 2010
Sorry sorry..... I didnt even bother to see the description
Just saw the different tuning 
Hisham Al-Sanea5th April 2010great lesson Marcus
Wilska5th April 2010Nice to see another lesson from you Marcus! Your tightness is impressive, which I was even half-way there. System of Down is not one of my favourite bands but you made this interesting. Thanks Marcus
- Marcus Siepen5th April 2010
Thanks again guys, and yes, the song is not in a normal e tuning
Chowy Fernandez6th April 2010perfect playing man!! sweet gibson!! very cool lesson!
- Marcus Siepen6th April 2010
Thanks Chowy
Laszlo Boross6th April 2010Great lesson Marcus! Nice work!
- Marcus Siepen7th April 2010
Thanks
Santiago Diaz Garces8th April 2010That tone is tremendous!! Awesome lesson Marcus
- Marcus Siepen8th April 2010
Thanks Santiago
Zsolt Galambos12th April 2010A perfect cover! Cool! And your playing is so tight, a real pro
- Marcus Siepen13th April 2010
Thanks Zsolt
Vasilije Vukmirovic13th April 2010Great lesson!
Daniel Realpe17th April 2010this is great! killer riffing!
thefireball24th May 2010wow - so awesome!
- Marcus Siepen20th June 2010
Thanks gyus
- main
- 1
- Members only2
- Members only3
- Members only4
- Members only5
- Members only6
- Members only7
- Members only8
- Members only9
- Difficulty: 4
- Difficulty5
System of a Down Style
System of a Down, SOAD, D standard, harmonized guitar melodies, alternative metal, nu metalby Cosmin Lupu - Difficulty4
- Difficulty6
The History of Metal...
blues rock, heavy rock, heavy metal, thrash, glam, doom metal, death metal, grindcore, black metal, groove metal, progressive, power metal, nu metal, melodic death metal, symphonic metal, metalcore, djentby Ben Higgins - Difficulty3
Nashville Number System
nashville, numbers, charts, chords, chord, progression, ii v i, jazzby David Wallimann - Difficulty2
Determining The Key...
how to find a key, key, determining the key, pentatonic scale, modes, finding the rootby Ivan Milenkovic - Difficulty5
Metallica: Sad But True
Metallica, Kirk Hammett, James Hetfield, Jason Newsted, Riffs, Rhythm, Solo, Phrases, Bluesby Zsolt Galambos - Difficulty3
- Difficulty4
- Difficulty7
Aspects of Prog Metal
Ever Forthright, Progressive Metal, Polyrhythm, Economy Picking, Arpeggio, String Skipping, Legatoby Nicholas Llerandi
- Lesson
- My notes
- Statistics
Hi everybody, welcome to a full song lesson, featuring "Sad Statue" by System of a Down.
The song was released on the bands Mezmerize album and in case you know the original you will see that I edited it a bit for this lesson to keep it short and focused. One thing I cut for this lesson is the second verse, it is an exact repetition of the first verse, so there was no need to repeat it in this lesson, I guess as soon as you can play it once you are also able to play it a second time if you want to play along with the original ;-)
The second thing I edited is one chorus. S.o.a.D. repeat the chorus 3 times, in my version there are only 2. Here we have to pay attention a bit, cause each chorus is slightly different from the others. In the original, the first chorus has one acustic round and one heavy round, this is the chorus that I kicked out for this lesson. The second chorus is exactly as the first one, just that the last chord is repeated, so chrous number 2 is slightly longer than the first one. The last chorus finally is exaclty as number 2, just that this time it is played fully with a distorted sound.
You also have to pay attention to the tuning for this song, it is played in a drop D tuning, that is also detuned half a note, so the tuning of your open strings is C#/G#/C#/F#/A#/D#
The structure of the song (used in this lesson) is the following:
Intro - Bar 1-4
Main Riff 1 - Bar 5-12
Main Riff 2 - Bar 13-20
Verse - Bar 21-36
Chorus 1 clean - Bar 37-44
Chorus 1 Heavy - Bar 45-54
Picking part - Bar 55-70
Main Riff 1 - Bar 71-78
Main Riff 2 - Bar 79-86
Chorus 2 Heavy - Bar 87-104
Outro - Bar 105-113
Below this text you can find all the chords used for this lesson, if you still have any questions, feel free to contact me, now have fun practicing.
Cheers
Marcus
