Californication

Californication is a great song to learn at any level, but it’s a song I’d especially recommend to beginners, as it’s very fun and satisfying to play.

The Main Riff

The main riff is based around two chords, A minor and F. I’d recommend you try to play F with the thumb on the low E string, as it will make the riff a bit easier to play. This is also a really good introduction to the “thumb over” technique for playing barre chords as we don’t need all of the notes of that shape to be played!

The idea is then to target specific strings within each of these two shapes. On A minor, we’re playing the open A string, followed by the D string on fret 2. We then play the open B string, followed by the same string but this time with the index finger on fret 1, forming our A minor shape.

On F, the concept is the same. We start with the E string on fret 1, followed by the A string on fret 3. We then play the open G string, followed by the same string played with the middle finger on fret 2, forming our F major chord!

Rhythm wise, we’re playing each chord for a bar each, and plucking the strings on “1 and 2 and”, leaving space at the end of each bar.

The riff’s outro

To play this little outro, we’re going to need four chords, C, G, F and D minor. Let’s look at a couple of options to play these shapes. If you’re a beginner, we’ll stick to open chords as much as we can. It won’t be exactly what’s played on the recording, but at least you’ll be able to play this whole part! And of course, if you’re more advanced, we’ll play the shapes Frusciante plays on the recording!

We’re going to play each chord for two beats, and we’re playing 8th note arpeggios on every chord, except for the final D minor, where we’ll play two quarter notes instead.

If you choose to play these shapes open, we’ll pluck the strings A, G, E and B on the C major. Next, on G major, we’ll pluck the strings E, D, B and G. We then move on to F major, where we’ll play the strings D, G, B and G again. On D minor, our last chord, we’ll pluck the open D string, before strumming our chord shape!

And as always, remember that you don’t need to move your middle finger when transitioning from F to D minor!

If you’re more advanced, or if you want to practice your barre chords, we can play the actual arpeggios of the song. We start again on the C major, playing the A string, D, B and G. On the G major that follows, play the strings E, A, G and D. On F major, we’re playing exactly the same thing we did on G major just before. On D minor, we’ll finish by plucking the open D string, before strumming our chord shape.

The pre-chorus

To play the pre-chorus, we’re only going to need two open chords, A minor and FMaj7!

We’re going to play each chord for a bar, following the strumming pattern below.

The chorus

Great news! We already know all the chord shapes we need for the chorus! We’re only using open chord shapes for C, G, D minor and A minor.

We’re playing each chord for two beats each, with a pretty simple strumming pattern where we play a downstroke on each beat, except on the very last D minor.

That means the strumming pattern on the first half of the chorus would go like this:

The last D minor of the chord progression is “pushed” and played on the “and” of beat 4 of the previous bar. After this push, we’re going to stay on D minor for a bar, and play a different pattern.

So on the second half of this chord progression, we can play this:

This chord progression is played twice, with the only difference being that the last D minor is being strummed only once at the very end of the chorus, and we just let it ring!

The solo

The song is in A minor, but the solo is in the key of F# minor! Since it’s in a different key, the solo isn’t played over the same chords we’ve seen before. We don’t have to play the chords as we obviously want to learn to play the solo, but knowing them can help you understand what’s going on, or even record a loop to practice the solo over. The chords we need are F#min, D, Bmin, A and E.

Feel free to use any chord shape you like, but I’d go with these:

And the structure of this chord progression goes like this:

In terms of strumming, do as you please! The important thing is to leave lots of space. If you’re not sure how to do that, you can play this pattern on the long F#min and the D:

And this pattern on the part of the chord progression where we play two chords per bar:

Let’s now dive into the solo! The solo is mainly based on the F# minor pentatonic scale, with touches of the minor scale to add some colour! We’re playing over shapes 4, 5 and 1 which look like that:

The important thing with this solo is to try humming or singing the melody if you can. Doing this will help you hear the different phrases that Frusciante is playing, making everything much easier to remember! Have fun with it!