Scarified



Scarified is the third song on Second Heat.

It is an instrumental song by the band Racer X and, according to bassist Juan Alderete, the band's most popular song. The song was released as a single mini-record and distributed for free in guitar magazines before its appearance on 1987's Second Heat.

As of December 2017, the studio recording of the song has over 357,000 views on YouTube, and Paul Gilbert's rendition of it from Space Ship Live has over 11,000,000.

Due to its employment of high-tempo implementations of alternate picking, sweeping, string skipping, tapping, and left hand stretches, "Scarified" is widely considered to be one of the most difficult songs to perform on guitar.

Composition
The song's main riff was based on a Scott Travis double-bass drum line. After hearing it at a rehearsal, Paul Gilbert wrote the riff in synchronicity with the bass drum and constructed a song around it.

The song is primarily composed in F sharp minor, but the solo section is in A flat minor. On the studio recording, it is played around 140 bpm.

The pre-chorus is comprised of an arpeggio section which moves from D major to F diminished before resolving to F sharp. Each pre-chorus is followed by a bass lead from Juan Alderete. The song's chorus is adapted from Johann Cristoph Friedrich Bach's 1784 Harpsichord Concerto in A maj. and moves into a tapping section with guitar and bass.

The first solo is played by Paul Gilbert and utilizes an E Lydian arpeggio over the 6 chord (E major) before moving into A flat natural minor. Bruce Bouillet plays the next section and introduces it with an Abm7 string skip arpeggio.

The song's finale is a sequenced string skip arpeggio played in harmony. It starts with F#m7 before moving into G diminished. Then, the entire sequence modulates up a whole step and repeats (Abm7-Adim). In order to harmonize with Gilbert, Bouillet had to play a major 7th string skip, one of the most difficult left hand undertakings on guitar.

Other appearances
The song was performed by Bruce Bouillet, Juan Alderete, Scott Travis, and Chris Arvan and recorded by the video production company Backstage Pass. This recording appears at the end of Bruce Bouillet's instructional tape, Improvisation for Progressive Hard Rock Guitar, and Juan Alderete's instructional tape, Progressive Hard Rock Bass.

Paul Gilbert recorded an acoustic version of the song for his 2003 album Acoustic Samurai.

Bouillet and Gilbert performed the song at the 2007 G3 concert.

Bouillet played a modified version of the song's solo section in his 2016 Racer X medley.