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BC-172 • Power Chords 1
Rock ooot...
The Justinguitar Beginners Course...
So here we go into rock guitar. "Power Chords" are used in most styles of music but are particularly useful for rock guitar, but even sound cool on acoustic (check Nirvana's Unplugged album for an awesome example). The basic idea is that you will learn one shape and that one shape can move around the fingerboard and make other chords. It uses no open strings, and muting the open strings is a very important part of the technique.
Video Lesson
Lets start by playing them and do the theory later
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Use only your 1st, 3rd an 4th fingers as shown, and start by putting your 1st finger in the 3rd fret of the 6th string (the note G). Then put down your 3rd and 4th fingers, if this is a bit of stretch don't worry, you will soon limber up! Try to keep them together, the 3rd finger kinda on top of the 4th as shown below.
Some people like to play the two notes on 5th and 4th strings with just a small barre with the 3rd finger. It's ok to do that but I think using the two fingers is a lot better because you have better finger position on the notes and will get a better sound, it's faster to change chords most of the time and easier to get all the thin strings muted. My strong advice is to learn it this way, and then if you still prefer to use the little barre you have the option of choosing whichever one works best in any situation!
Try and keep your middle finger relaxed just hanging out where it feels good. Don't try and pull it down to the thin strings - sometimes I do that but only when trying to show the chords in lessons!
Muting the unused strings
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Try to get your 1st finger to lay softly on strings 3, 2 and 1. You don't want those notes to sound, you just want to mute the strings. This is very important, they will sound really bad if you let them ring out. You can't just be careful and play the 3 strings that have the fingers on them but that is very hard and means that you will never be able to rock out and hit the strings with any energy, or run around on stage like a rock god :-). Note that strings 1,2 and 3 are not being pressed down, just lightly touched to stop them from ringing out |
With a super low action you might have trouble muting the strings because they will require so little pressure to sound, but you must. It's the down side of having such a low action... you get you barre chords easy, but it's going to take some practice to get those notes muted properly. Good news is that all it will take is a light touch and lots of practice!!
Many times Power Chords are played with only down strums and often with something called palm muting, and it might at first seem that it's not so important to mute the unused strings. But it is REALLY important to mute them because many songs do use up and down strums with power chords (Smells Like Teen Spirit springs to mind) and also if you don't mute them and you play loud with distortion the strings might ring out even if you don't pick them and make your chord sound messy. So make sure you get this string muting real good!
Take a listen
It should sound like this when you play all the strings, from fattest to thinnest (6th to 1st). Make sure the thin strings are muted.
Root Notes
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Each chord has a "Root Note" - shown with a R, which gives the chord it's name. Once you have that down we need to move it around. Have a look at these notes on the 6th (thickest) string (just ignore the 5th string notes for now). The example we just played was a G Power Chord (Also called G5) because the root note under the first finger was the note G. If we move the shape up the neck we can play other chords, for instance, if you move it up two frets you get the chord A because that is the note under the first finger R! This root note concept applies to many things on guitar - well actually pretty much everything that does not use open strings! All scales and chords that don't use open strings can just be moved up nd down the neck and as long as you know which note is the root note you will be able to find the chord! It is a big concept that will help you advance on the guitar so take time to remember where all the notes are!
The Notes In between You should now know all the notes in between the "white" notes from your study of BC-152 • The Note Circle - but still you should try and remember ALL the notes on the thickest two strings - you will use these time and time again, so they really need to be in your memory, not on the screen!
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Of course playing the Power Chords right up the dusty end (past the 8th fret) gets difficult because the frets are so close together. Next stage we'll learn them with a 5th string root too which solves that problem, but it's important not to rush ahead, so make sure you put your effort just into the 6th string root chords for now!
It is possible to make power chords on other string groups too, but in normal playing you will only use root 6 and root 5 because they sound deep and powerful. The others are a lot less common and don't tend to sound as good.
OK, once you have found you inner rock god and have had a good thrash, it's time to look at some lovely new chords that you can use to embellish you regular chord playing in BC-173 • A Sus2/4 and D Sus2/4 Chords, Esus4
HELP!!!!
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If you need to ask a question about this lesson - there is a topic set up specifically to help you with this lesson. To help you find it easily you can click the following link and it will take you right the topic. You'll be able to see questions that other people had and ask your own questions! Hopefully one of the very helpful members of our community will be there to help you soon, I do go there and answer stuff too - but there are just too many questions for me to answer alone! |
Master Rock Power Chords
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Master Rock Power Chords is a collection of 14 play along tracks to help you put your Power Chords into practice. It starts super easy with just open Power Chords and very simple rhythms and then gets into using 6th string root, then Palm Mutes, Stop Mutes and then 5th string root chords and combining them all with more interesting rhythm patterns (but nothing too complex - this is aimed at beginner players!). Lots of fun :) |
Justinguitar Beginner's Products
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I have four great beginners products that will help you make the most of this course. Most popular is The Justinguitar Beginners Songbook which contains 100 songs arranged by difficulty that perfectly match up with each level of the course. Many people told me they like books more than web pages so we've made The Justinguitar Beginners Course Book (comes with 2 x CD's too!) and many people found being online to watch the videos a pain so we offer The Justinguitar Beginners Course DVD which also means you can watch the vids in much better quality. Together they complete the whole online course and are perfect when there is no internet connection!! Also very popular is Practical Music Theory for those that like to know what they are doing and why!! It covers very basic theory in an easy to digest way and puts it onto the guitar! They are all available in Bundle Packs too where you can save a bunch of money!! Buying products and making donations help keep the site free and growing! :) |
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