Scar Tissue

Scar Tissue is a very rich song, with lots to learn from, and it'll definitely help you crack the code behind Frusciante's approach to chords, patterns, and solos!

The Intro

Let’s start with the intro! The intro is built around three chords, and even if we’re just hearing single notes, it’s important to understand that we’re actually just highlighting two notes from each chord. The three chords are F, C, and D minor.

So what we’re doing here is playing the root note and the third of F, C, and D minor.

The good news is that if you’re not super comfortable with your barre chords yet, you can still learn these shapes and get this very cool intro in your fingers! The difficult part is that we want to be able to strum the shapes and only hear the two notes we’re targeting. That means we’ve got to mute all the other strings!

The idea is to rest a finger lightly on a string, just enough to stop it from vibrating. This can be very tricky at first, so stick to the first shape as long as you need!

Something very cool about learning this song is that you’ll come across the same technique in lots of Red Hot Chili Peppers songs. So, if like me you’re into John Frusciante’s playing, this is worth spending some time on!

Let’s quickly talk about the structure. We play F for a bar, but we’ll switch to C on the “and” of beat 4. We’re going to play C again on beat 1 of the next bar, but switch straight away to D minor (with a little slide). We then stay on D minor until the very end of the second bar, where we switch again to C on the “and” of beat 4, before going back to F again. So we could visualise the structure like this, keeping in mind that C is just a transition chord:

When it comes to the rhythm of it, the best thing to do is to understand the core groove (or pattern), and to practice it with muted strums first. You want to be able to play it without thinking too much about each movement you’re making, so we can then apply the three chord shapes we’ve seen to it, and so the transitions don’t feel too overwhelming.

Once the pattern is locked in, we’re going to target our strum either on the root note or the third, but not at the same time. Basically, we’re always going back and forth between the lowest and the highest note of our shape. The reason why we’re muting the other strings is because we’re very much strumming and not plucking the strings here. The only time you’d strum the two notes together is on the C major that we use as a transition chord.

We’ve got some little additional changes on the second half of the intro, where we have a little melody played on the D minor pentatonic scale. Notice that the note G that we’re playing on fret 8 on the B string is actually played at the end of our F chord!

The Verse

The verse is very similar to the intro we’ve just seen, but we play a different melody at the end of each section. We’re mainly playing over shapes 1 and 5 of the F major scale, with a touch of F Lydian on the third lick.

As you can see on the diagram above, the augmented 4th played on fret 12 on the B string is the note that gives the scale its F Lydian sound. It’s a nice little colour that you can experiment with!

The Chorus

The chorus is a little easier to play than what we’ve seen before. We have three chords to play, F, C, and D minor, played with different shapes, but following the same structure as the intro!

C major is again a transition chord that we only hit once in our pattern on the “and” of beat 4!

If you’re struggling with the transition to the quick C major that acts as a transition chord, don’t feel bad! It’s a tricky one, and know that the transition from F to C is actually a little bit more subtle than what we’re doing here. So, if you’re muting that C when going from F to D minor, it’s not the end of the world!

The solos

We’ve got three different solos, played over three slightly different chord progressions. We’re going to need three chords, D minor, C, and E minor.

The structures of the three solos look like this:

There’s quite a lot of freedom when it comes to strumming the chords on the solo, but I’d personally play the same pattern as the chorus!

The only difference comes at the end of solos 1 and 2, where we switch between D minor and E minor at the end of the bar. On top of that, we want to highlight the lower part of our D minor on beat 3, followed by the higher one on the “and” of beat 3, effectively splitting the shape in half. We’ll then do the same thing on beat 4 with E minor!

In terms of soloing, you have two options. You can either stay mainly on the B string and try to match the beautiful melody that Frusciante is playing using a slide, but I’d suggest learning it by ear! It’s an amazing ear training exercise. Or, you can improvise a solo on the D minor scale, like he would do live.

If you want to improvise, aim for a slow paced, simple melody. These chord progressions are great platforms for experimenting with your lead playing, you could travel up and down the D minor scale, or even just stay on shape 1 of the pentatonic scale!

If you’re more advanced, I’d suggest you experiment a little bit with D Dorian, where we would swap the b6 with a natural 6 in our scale!