Smells Like Teen Spirit Guitar Lesson

One of my all-time favourite songs, this early 1990s grunge classic is one of the best-selling songs of all time and was one of the songs that got me into playing guitar. A perfect song to practice your strumming!

The Riff

Let’s start by looking at the chords we need, we’ll need four powerchords: F5, Bb5, G#5 and C#5

The important thing to understand to simplify things is that F5 and Bb5 are played in the same hand position. The same goes for G#5 and C#5. Not only that, but the transitions are identical!

That means, if you have a solid transition between F5 and Bb5, then it will also be solid between G#5 and C#5.

Since we’re strumming these chords hard, we want to be able to mute the strings that we aren’t fretting when playing powerchords. It can definitely be a challenge at first, but in the long run, it’ll mean you’ll be able to strum without targeting specific strings!

To do that, you can mute the higher strings with the index finger. Just rest your index finger on the strings you don’t want to hear.

When it comes to a powerchord where the root note is on the A string (such as Bb5), I tend to rest my middle finger on the low E string to mute it. You can also slightly touch that string with your index finger.

Let’s now look at the strumming pattern for the riff. I always say the best thing to do is to spend time practicing a new pattern with muted strums instead of throwing everything together at once.

Simply rest your fretting hand on the strings to mute them all, then play the strumming pattern as if you were playing chords!

Take your time with it and make sure you can “hear” the pattern before you add the chords onto it.

The great thing about this pattern is that we’re playing it twice. Once over F5 and Bb5, and once over G#5 and C#5. And like we said just before, It's the same transition!

We also need to add some “Chka Chkas”! AKA, muted strums between our chords. That’s the essence of the riff and a great way smooth out chord transitions!

What I mean by that is, as you mute the strings a the end of the pattern, you can begin shifting to the next hand position.

The verse and pre-chorus

The verse kicks off with a small lick on beat 2. Just two notes, so we can breathe and relax a bit after the very intense riff we’ve just played!

Here, the idea is to hold on to this shape, and play the G string on beat 2, and the B string on the and of beat 2.

Let it breathe for a bar, then repeat!

Just so you know, the two notes we're playing here are the notes C and F, so we're essentially playing a different voicing for an F5.

Now, onto the pre-chorus. Our goal is to build tension and make it feel more intense than the verse, setting up the return of the main riff. The good news? We’re still using the same notes and shape! The only difference is the timing.

We’re playing quarter notes, one note per beat.

Starting on G string on beat 1, moving on to the B string on beat 2, back on the G string on beat 3, and back on the B string on beat 4. Easy!

Post-chorus

In this post-chorus, we’ll tackle two sections featuring some new powerchords.

For the first half, we’ll need F5 (that we’ve used on the riff), E5, and F#5.

The rhythm for this section straightforward, it looks like this:

On beat 4, jump to fret 3 on the G string and bend that note up a semi-tone!

Now, for the second half, this time, we’ll add Bb5 and A5 to our list of powerchords for this song.

And the pattern will look like this:

The solo

In this solo, Kurt Cobain is playing the same melody we've heard throughout the song.

I strongly recommend learning this solo, as it's the only thing we're missing before knowing the whole song! We're playing in the key of F minor, primarily using notes of the pentatonic scale, with some spicy additions of the natural minor scale

To understand what's happening, take a look at the two shapes we're using here:

Of course, once you've got the solo in your fingers, feel free to use the same scale to improvise your own solo!

In conclusion

A massive song, in every way! Every section we've broken down is fun to play on its own, and there's plenty to learn.

If this feels like a challenge, take it step by spot, learning each part at your own pace. No rush!

I learned so much from learning this song a long time ago, and I’m sure you will too!