Why You Have To Learn The Power Chord

One of the easiest ways to start playing electric guitar is by knowing the power chord; it is wonderful what you can accomplish if you can play this chord on the neck of your guitar, there is a ton of very simple songs you can start learning and playing. There are many great bands that their success is based on the power chord; just to mention a few, The Ramones, Green Day, Blink 182 and many others.

Let us begin, what is this power chord? To strum the power chord the fingers that you will use are your index finger, your ring finger and your pinky finger; for example, to learn the A chord, put your index finger on the fifth fret of the E string, your ring finger on the seventh fret of the fifth string and your pinky finger below that one, on the D string on the seventh fret also, play it and you will get, like I mentioned before, the A chord.

The important thing here is that by knowing how to play it on the fifth fret, or the first fret, or the third fret, you can strum every power chord on the fret board getting a different note, the beauty of this is when you turn on your amp and you switch to distortion, or if you have a multifunction pedal, you’ll get that rock star feeling right after you put your pick on the strings.

You can also move down to the fifth string and get one more note, for example if you move your left hand down one string you get the D chord, now let me give you a little bit of music theory to explain the reason of the power chord: the notes that you are getting with your index finger and your pinky finger is one note, the difference is that the one with your pinky finger is in a higher frequency, and the note you are getting with your ring finger, well that one is just a note that has a direct relationship with the first note, and when they vibrate together, it sounds good.

You can try it without distortion, and there are actually a couple of guitar players that use them, but , and I believe that most musicians out there will think the same as me, the power chord was made to be played loud and with distortion.

Download song and tabs from the bands I mentioned before, also The offspring and Nirvana are great bands to start learning from, but if you want to go beyond that and start being serious, Metallica has great songs to, but let me advice you, to play songs from Metallica if you are a beginner is not a good idea, they do have some hard songs, but eventually, they are a great choice.

George Balibrera