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Beginners Guitar Lesson: Play Power Chords The Easy Way

By Mike Hayes | January 10, 2009

How often do you look up the TAB for your favorite song and find
a page full of difficult (make that impossible) looking power
chords?

For some reason years ago in the “land of TAB” some clever fellow
decided to make power chords hard to play by making all power
chords three finger formations.

I have no idea why they did this, as you will discover shortly …
two of the notes in the formation are exactly the same letter
name.

Since two of the notes in the three note power chord share the
same letter name no additional harmony is created, therefore you
can successfully drop one of these notes and create a much more
user friendly two finger power chord shape.

Before we take a look at the history of power chords and how we
are able to design or re-design our power chord shapes depending
on the particular musical situation. I would like to draw your
attention to the importance of knowing the notes on the guitar
fingerboard.

Because the majority of guitarists learn via TAB they have no
idea of the names of the individual notes they are playing, therefore  it
is impossible for them to think through the process of why they
are playing something.

Hence, we have the scary situation where many years ago somebody decided to write things a certain way and countless guitar sites all over the Internet continue to churn out the same incorrect stuff without questioning why they are doing something!

As you know we are in the information age, the problem is the quality
of the “source” of the information.

Power chord history:

In the early days of rock and pop music 1950’s – 1960’s as
artists became more popular their management organized bigger
gigs in larger venues.

Because of the rapid explosion in popularity of the new music, it
caught instrument manufacturers by surprise. Guitar amplifiers
that were originally designed for small clubs suddenly found
themselves struggling to fill large dance halls and arenas.

As the guitarists pounded away on their guitars trying to be
heard over the screaming fans their amplifiers began to distort.

This was the first warning sign to the guitarist that the
amplifier was overloading, the second signal was usually smoke
billowing from the back of the amplifier followed by a loud crack
as the amp gasped it’s final chord.

And that was usually the end of that amp, during the performance
another amp was quickly set up to replaced the deceased amp.
Here’s the fun … part just as the amplifier was burning out it
created a really neat overloaded (distorted) guitar sound,
unfortunately it only lasted a short time as the amp self
destructed moments later.

Guitar players loved this new sound so the instrument
manufacturers created a pedal that would re-create the overloaded
sound without destroying the amp.

These pedals often referred to as ‘distortion’ or ‘overdrive’
pedals were the beginnings of the signal processing equipment
used by electric guitarists today.

Now that the distortion pedal allowed the guitarist to play for
unlimited periods without fear of equipment failure, the player
could now experiment with new techniques.

Remember, previously the amplifier would only last a few minutes
before burning out so the guitarist only had a few seconds to
experiment.

The first thing guitar players discovered was that open string
chords did not work with the distorted sound.

Any one who has ever tried to transfer acoustic guitar techniques
to electric guitar will notice that most of the chord shapes do
not sound good with the distorted sound.

The two finger power chord:

After a lot of trial and error guitarists discover the best and
most “powerful” sound was created by playing two notes together,
hence the name “power chord”.

Technically speaking a chord is three different notes played
together, but new music requires new theoretical terminology to
describe the sounds.

A good example of power chords is the introduction to “Smoke On
The Water” by Deep Purple … please note these are two note power chords often incorrectly written as three note power chords.

The first and the fifth:

The two notes that produce the best results are the first and
fifth notes.

Here’s some examples for you to try …

Scale of G: G,A,B,C,D,E,F#,G

First note is “G” and the fifth note is “D” when these two notes
are played together they produce a “G” power chord.

Often power chords are written with a number 5 after the letter
name i.e., G5 is another way of writing a “G” power chord.

Here is an example in the key of D

Scale of D: D,E,F#,G,A,B,C#,D

First note is “D” and the fifth note is “A” when these two notes
are played together they produce a “D” power chord.

And one more example in the key of A

Scale of A: A,B,C#,D,E,F#,G#,A

First note is “A” and the fifth note is “E” when these two notes
are played together they produce a “A” power chord.

Two note power chord vs the three note power chord:

The notes in a two note G5 chord are G & D

The notes in a three note G5 chord are G,D and G

Can you see the duplication?

So, don’t make things hard for yourself … carting that extra note
all over the fingerboard is like pulling and elephant up a hill,
make it easy and play the two note version, it will sound a whole
lot better.

www.GuitarCoaching.com

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