John Frusciante Licks

Hi GMC!

Welcome to this lesson covering the style of John Frusciante, a very creative guitarists and composer known for playing with Red Hot Chili Pepers, and now he's back!

In this new lesson you'll find 5 licks that combine his most used techniques, patterns and tricks over the same chord progression (E - B - F#m - A) in order to recreate his approach to phrasing and faster licks. The key is E Major, and the scales used here are Pentatonic Major and Ionian mode.

Each lick introduces a new important aspect of his playing which combines different techniques but always focuses on beautiful melodies.

Lick 1: Frusciante's Melodic Phrasing. Bending work.

Lick 2: Use of Octaves + Repetitive Penta Shred.

Lick 3: Bending + Rock Pattern + Double Stops.

Lick 4: Fast trills combined with Open String.

Lick 5: Hendrix Influence.

Lick 6: More Hendrix + Fast Rock/Blues licks.


Frusciante's playing is more focused on melody and emotion than technique or virtuosity. He thinks that guitar hasn't evolved in this direction since 70's. His main influences are Jimi Hendrix and Jimmy Page, but he also like more technical guitarists like Van Halen, Steve Ray Vaughan, Randy Roads and Steve Vai.
In this lesson I've tried to recreate his melodic side but I also added many of his most technical ideas to have a wider coverage of his style.

As a composer, he is a beast, we would need another lesson (or series) to analyze and explain his composition style. I can work on it if we have some requests!


Sound:
I used Fractal Ax8's Suhr Badger 30, Cubase 9.5 to record audio and midi, Groove Agent for drums and Native Instruments Halion for synth. I've also used a Steinberg Bass guitar connected to AX8's Ampeg emulation.

These are my settings:



In the mix I added a tube drive to make my lead guitar sound a bit dirtier: