Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Power chords.

Power chords are the backbone of Heavy metal and hard rock music. Anyone who wants to play heavy metal must know these chords. I will post a video of power chords in future. The video will give you a complete explanation of power chords.

Power chords are best used with a distortion pedal and with a technique which is called "palm muting". Palm muting is nothing but keeping the base of your palm near the bridge of your guitar and mildly muting the strings. This has a very good effect when you play the power chords.

Power chords are the chords where there is no 3rd. This means that a power chord is only made of 1st and 5th. An A power chord is written as A5 and a C power chord is written has C5.

So the point is that, if any note has a '5' next to it, it means that its a power chord.

The C power chords will have C and G note.

I will list some of the power chords for you:

C5

e---------------
b---------------
g---------------
d-------5--------
a---3------------
e---------------

D5

e---------------
b---------------
g---------------
d-------7--------
a---5------------
e---------------

F5

e---------------
b---------------
g---------------
d---------------
a-----3----------
e-1--------------

G5

e---------------
b---------------
g---------------
d---------------
a-------5--------
e---3------------


Please note that all these chords are movable. This means, for example, if you move the G5 chords to the next fret, the chord will become a G#5 chord. # indicates a sharp note.

There are two more movable power chord shapes you must familiarize yourself with. In the shape below, the chord starts from a G string, you will have to stretch your hand a bit. The shape is the following:

A5

e---------------
b--------5-------
g--2-------------
d---------------
a---------------
e---------------

Last but not the least, this is also another movable power chord shape:

e-------5--------
b--3-------------
g---------------
d---------------
a---------------
e---------------

Till next time. Cheers.

No comments: