PERFORMANCE NOTES

“B.Y.O.B.”

System of a Down

THIS HARD-DRIVING, ANGST-RIDDEN protest song from the early 2000s features lots of intense and rhythmically dense riffing, courtesy of System of a Down guitarist Daron Malakian, who performs the song in drop-D tuning, transposed down a half step # , or what many guitarists refer to as “drop C ” tuning.

Malakian performs “B.Y.O.B.” entirely on his guitar’s bottom three strings and makes great use of the tuning, which enables him to fret root-5th power chords with a single finger on the bottom two strings and smoothly perform intricate riffs with quickly changing chords, such