Now notice that the 6th string must not be played.

Power Chord with the root on the 5th string will sound very bad indeed if you forget to mute this string. So how do you do that?

Well we use then of our first finger, the very tip to press on the side of the the 6th string. No hard enough to make the note sound, but hard enough to stop the note ringing out. See the photo and try and copy my hand position.

So if you look closely now at the neck diagram below you can see that there are now two ways of playing every power chord! One with the 6th string root and one with the 5th string root!

Teen Spirit the Easy (better) WayThis really opens up the possibilities, and yes you can play any song in many different ways. For example remember Smells Like Teen Spirit from the last lesson, well check out what note is in the first fret 5th string... Bb5. So instead of playing the Bb up at the 6th fret you can stay in the first fret but move the shape down a string! A bit easier now ain't it!! You will also notice that the next two chords (Ab and Db) are also both in the same fret (4th). The song is now a load easier to play and will sound more like the record too - just make sure that you mute that 6th string or it will sound real bad.

Two Ways To Play

So make sure that you understand that every power chord can be played in two places in the neck. You will have to learn how to figure out which one you should use when. Use a little logic, and listen. Sometimes it is better to play them all on one string anyway, because the sound will stay consistent. Use your ears and your head!

Some cool tunes to check out...

Once you have that idea down you should check out a whole load of tunes that use powerchords. Some good ones off the top of my head are:

Nirvana - Polly
The Offspring - Pretty Fly For A White Guy (quite hard)
Blink 182 - Man Overboard
The Bloodhound Gang - Chasey Laine
Lenny Kravitz - Fly Away
The Hives - Hate To Say I Told You So
The Kinks - You Really Got Me

To compliment these lessons I think you will like a product I made for the Charanga company which has a number of songs that I wrote and produced you can play along with. It teaches you all the rock rhythm techniques and rhythms learnt in these lessons and the songs progress from very easy to totally rockin'. It is downloadable and you can even record your own guitar and listen back to yourself playing along with the tracks! It is a great way to learn, great fun and by the end you will really be cooking! It really is cool, there are loads of pictures and as you look at the music a neck shows you where to put your fingers on the animated fingerboard.

If you buy it - enter JustinSandercoe as a promotional code and you will get 33% discount too.

Check it all out here: Music Coach Rock Powerchords