Free Lesson Power Chords

After you've learned open chords & some barre chords, it's time to take a look another extremely common type of chord used in rock style guitar playing: the power chord.

Power chords are what you're left with when you strip a basic triad of the 3rd, which is the note that determines whether it's a major or minor chord. This way you end up with just the "power" of the root note and the 5. Earlier we played open chords without a 3rd as well, but when most players mention the term power chord they refer to the classic voicing that we're going to explore in this tutorial.

It's used in all styles of music in all kinds of ways, but in this tutorial we'll explore the use of power chords in a rock context. Let's get started!

Tone - great for crunch, hi-gain -- these chords take endless amounts of distortion beautifully.

Root on 6th string (show 2 and 3 note chord shapes), relate to barre chord shape.

Root on 5th string (same shapes, diff string set), relate to barre chord shape.

Mixing Voicings - muting techniques when changing chords & string sets.

Now, lets check out a short sample song that incorporates all of these approaches and techniques!

Mike Olekshy
Instructor Mike Olekshy
Styles:
Rock
Difficulty:
Free Lesson Power Chords song notation

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