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5-chords or power chords powering your guitar! | |
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Power chords are very important chords for a guitar player. Almost every blues and rock guitarist has used this chord in some way. Guitarists like Jimi Hendrix, Pete Townshend and Steve Vai used this chord one way or the other. And so should you. Fortunately it's not that difficult.
A power chord has just two different notes, the root and the 5th. It's just that simple. Let's take C 5. The root will be the C and the 5th is the G. So, C 5 will look like this.
It's that simple. But how do you play this on your guitar?
Let's take a look at G5. We've seen that a power chords have two notes: the root and the 5th. So G 5 would be G - D. Now take a look at your fret board. You'll find the G on the 3rd fret on the low E string and the D on the 5th fret on the A string. So this would be the way to play G 5.
Notice that the root is played on the low E string and the 5th is played on the A string.
You can do the same with the root on the A string and the 5th on the D string.
In the next example C5 is played with the root (C) on the A string and the 5th (G) on the D string.
This way you can play any power chord just by changing your position on the fret board. For instance, B 5 is played with the root (B) on the low E string (7th fret) and the 5th (F#) on the A string (9th fret), or the root on the A string (2nd fret) and the 5th on the D string (4th fret)
On the next page you will see how we can make the power chords a little bit stronger, by adding an extra note.
We can make the power chords stronger by adding an extra note to the chord. This note will be a P8 higher than the root. Let's take C 5 again. We've seen that C 5 is: C - G. Adding an extra note (P8 higher than the C) would give us the following chord:
This chord is played on the guitar in the same way the normal power chord (C - G) is played.
C 5 is played on the A string (3rd fret) and the D string (5th fret). The next C can be found on the G string (5th fret). So C 5 with the extra C would be played like this.
And again, you can play any power chord on your guitar by changing your position on the fret board.
For instance, you can play B 5 like this:
Make sure you know the positions of every power chord on the low E string and the A string.
It will help you learn and understand the fret board.