Usuario:Magical Blas/Californication

Estilo musical y letra

Frusciante starts the song off with a sparse arpeggio picked riff in A minor. He develops this riff a little further towards the end of the section, but still manages to keep everything relatively simple. One thing that you will notice in live videos of him playing "Californication", is that he favors using his thumb to finger the low bass notes. I mention this in the lesson as well but also show you a way to play the riff easily if you are one of those players that aren't very comfortable with using their thumb to finger notes on the 6th string.

From there we go to a simple 2 chord pre-chorus section. Once again he is employing his thumb here and for the Fmaj7 chord in the pre-chorus you may want to try playing it that way to fill up the sound with the low F bass note on the 6th string.

The only other part of the song that deals with chords is the chorus. Once again John Frusciante employs basic open position chord forms throughout the chorus.

Frusciante's guitar solo for "Californication" is quite unique. During the solo section the song modulates to the parallel major key of A major. Within this framework John Frusciante plays an extremely stark yet melodic guitar solo. He employs a large amount of bends including a few unison bends. However, there are no technical fireworks to deal with here and as long as you concentrate on keeping those bends in tune you shouldn't have much of a problem mastering this solo very quickly.

La canción comienza en la tonalidad de La menor  con Frusciante seleccionando los acordes de Am y F durante doce compases , antes de seleccionar los acordes de CGF-Dm y luego retrocediendo y seleccionando Am y F durante 8 compases más antes de seleccionar CGF-Dm. otra vez. Para el pre-estribillo, Frusciante luego rasguea una combinación de acordes Am y Fmaj7 durante doce compases, hasta el coro cuando rasguea los acordes C-Gmaj7-Dm9-Am, luego CG-Dm9. Se destaca por su escasa combinación de notas de guitarra y bajo en el riff principal; Frusciante se inspiró en " Carnage Visors " de The Cure .

Después del segundo coro, Frusciante toca un solo de guitarra de 16 compases, junto con una modulación en La mayor . Después del solo, la tonalidad vuelve al La menor original y se toca una tercera estrofa y un estribillo final.