The Big Book of Power Chords
The Big Book of Power Chords
The Big Book of Power Chords
Publisher: Guitar Alliance Inc. 325 W Mill Malvern AR 72104 USA Web Site: www.guitaralliance.com E-Mail: kenny@guitaralliance.com Copyright 2013 All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means without prior permission of the copyright owner. Enquires Should be Made to the Publisher. Every effort has been made to ensure that this book is free from error or omissions. However, the Publisher, the Author, the Editor or their respective employees or agents, shall not accept responsibility for injury, loss or damage occasioned to any person acting or refraining from action as a result of material in this book whether or not such injury, loss or damage is in any way due to any negligent act or omission, breach of duty or default on the part of the Publisher, the Author, the Editor or their respective employees or agents.
P R E FA C E
I got a few funny faces when I announced that I was writing a book about power chords. Who can really blame them? There's only so much that you can say about power chords, right? I beg to differ. Power chords are synonymous with the guitar. Usually people think about someone on an electric guitar, with nice fat distortion, chugging away on power chords. There are undoubtedly hundreds of classic guitar riffs that use power chords as their primary tool, but they are not limited to just the electric guitar, as typical acoustic guitarist finds them helpful tools as well. Plus, the name 'Power Chord' is a cool name. This is not just some regular old chord. No, it's a Power Chord! Think back to the picture of the power chord rocker we visualised a moment ago. Don't you think he or she feels empowered by these, so-called Power Chords? They are powerful sounding and empowering at the same time. Power Chords! What's not to like about them? So, yes. I can write a whole book on simple power chords. I will show you the theory behind them. I will also tell you about the bigger picture that power chords belong to. I will show you how power chords are an integral part of the guitar and popular music as a whole. I will also introduce plenty of evidence to you about the merits of power chords. I'm talking about decade after decade of great guitar riffs that are wholly comprised of power chords. These are some of the greatest guitar riffs ever and they are played with power chords!
Once I'm done here, there will be no doubters out there. You will come to fully appreciate the power chord and have a firm grasp of it's use, not only for yourself, but for music in general. It will be a truly enlightening moment for you. On the other hand, they are only power chords. This meaning that they do have their limitations. I can't tell you how many players I've seen who could play power chords fine, but couldn't play an open chord or a barre chord to save their life, and not to mention, having no clue as to what they were playing. This will not be YOU, because you are lucky enough to have this book in your hands. I hope you enjoy it!
1
L E T ' S P L AY A POWER CHORD
EASY DOES IT
There are a few different ways to play a power chord, and we'll cover them all, but for now we're going to concentrate on just one. All power chords are easy to learn and play, but the first one I'll show you is delightfully easy, because we only need one finger to play it.
To play E power chord, you'll play the low E string open (the sixth string-closest to the ceiling) and play the 2nd frets of the A and D strings with your 1st finger (pointer). You'll strum all 3 strings at the same time (while being careful not to play the other 3 strings: G, B, and high E). Pretty simple, right? If you can't read the fancy diagram in illustration 1, then I suggest you hit the Guitar Alliance website, and check out this tutorial: How To Read A Chord Diagram An alternate way of presenting the E power chords is with tablature as in illustration 2.
Do you have the chord down, yet? Great! Now, lock yourself in your room, plug your guitar into your favourite amp, and turn it up. When you're all set, hit the E power chord, and feel the power! All should go well as long as you only play the bottom three strings, your finger is on the right fret, and you're firming holding down those two notes on the A and D string.
2
THE POWER CHORD RECIPE
We strum all six strings when we are playing a full open E chord as in illustration 3. We are playing six notes since there are six strings, but there are only three different notes: E, B, and G#. The other three notes are duplicates. They are the same notes played at a different pitch.
To be precise, we are playing three E notes, two B notes, and one G# note. The E notes appear on the low E string (sixth string), high E (1st string, closer to floor), and the 2 nd fret of the D string. The B notes can be found on the 2nd fret of the A string (5th string) and the open B string (2nd string). The lonely G# is found on the 1 st fret of the G string (3rd string).
Scales are always named after their root note, so to play a D major scale we would start on D. We can then construct the rest of the scale by applying a simple formula.
P R O P E R I D E N T I F I C AT I O N
You'll start running into problems when you deal with chords that have an altered 5th such as 7b5 chords. That's pretty advanced stuff, so we'll save it for another day. A chord with an altered 5 th is always labelled in the chord name. These types of chords are not very common, so almost all the chords that you'll run into can be substituted with a power chord.
CHAPTER RESOURCES
Learn how to play the C major scale on guitar in the lesson linked below: The Major Scale Learn more about the twelve notes in music: The Twelve Notes In Western Music
3
P L AY I N G P O W E R CHORDS
the 1st fret. The notes on the 2 nd frets of the A and D would fall on the 3rd frets respectively. Can you picture it in your mind? Hopefully you can imagine it and it would look like what you'll see in illustration 9.
Each note's relation to the other notes has stayed the same. The entire pattern has just moved up a half step. The E5 chord shape has magically become F5. It's not really magic. If we just think back to what we have learned we'll realise the the root note now falls on the 1 st fret of the E string. This happens to be an F note, and we know the chord will be named after the root, so we know it's F5. Take a look at illustration 10 to help you visualise it .
The 'R' marks the root. The 1st fret of the E string is F, so... What happens if you moved the pattern up a whole step from there? The root would fall on the 3rd fret and therefore create a G 5 chord as seen in illustration 11.
I've created a helpful table for you that will help you along until you can do it on your own. You'll find it below in illustration 12. The numbers in the row at the top signify the frets on the low E string. Fret 1 is marked with '1', fret 2 is marked by a '2', and so on. In the row at the bottom is the name of the note found on that particular fret.
It comes in handy to know both 6 th string and 5th string root forms. Imagine having to play an F5 and then playing a B5. On the E string you would have to jump from the 1 st fret all the way up to the 7 th fret. That's a huge jump and you could miss the change. To make things easier for yourself, and improve your chance of a good performance, you could just use the B on the 2 nd fret of the A string to create your B5. Going from the 1st fret of the E string to the 2nd fret of the A string is as easy as it gets.
CHAPTER RESOURCES
It's time to see if things are beginning to gel. Take the knowledge you've gained here, so far, and visit Guitar Alliance at the link below to try some exercises. Power Chord Exercises
4
THE BARRE CHORD CONNECTION
Let's take another look. The open E chord looks something like this...
To move the chord pattern up the neck, we create a barre with our 1st finger. This barre, in a way, replaces the nut of your guitar. The notes that were played open to produce the E chord will now be fingered with the barre that you create with your 1st finger. If we were to move the entire pattern up one fret it would look like this:
The reason we know that it's an F chord is because of the root note. The root note of the chord will be the lowest note. In the E chord, the root note was the low E string played open. Now that we have moved the chord shape up one fret the note on the first fret of the low E string is now the root note. That note is an F. Therefore we know we're dealing with an F chord. What if we moved it up to the 5 th fret as in the illustration below?
That would be an A!
CHAPTER RESOURCES
Here's a helpful video dealing with barre chords: What Are Barre Chords?
5
M A N Y W AY S T O P L AY P O W E R CHORDS
A VA R I E T Y O F O P T I O N S
There are many more ways to play power chords and we'll cover them all in this chapter. They say variety is the spice of life, so it pays to know the many options available to you. You never know when you might need a rare power chord form. Plus, knowing all the positions of the power chords leads to a deeper understanding of the guitar and music in general. It's true that you'll use the 6 th and 5th string root power chords most of the time. In most cases they are all you'll ever need, but it doesn't hurt to know all your options for the times when they don't work.
Illustration 19: Notes on the E string. Once again, you can use the table above to find your notes. It's key to your success that you can name the chordsnote just play them.
A STRING ROOT
In illustration 19 you'll see all the power chords with a 5 th string root tabbed out.
Illustration 22: D5
It's got one major change in how we play it in that the octave of the D note is one step higher on the B string than we are used to. Here are the power chords found on the D string:
Illustration 25: G5
Here the tab of the power chords that you can play with the 3 rd string root:
6
SLASH CHORDS
A slash chord or slashed chord is a chord whose bass note or inversion is indicated by the addition of a slash and the letter of the bass after the root note letter. It does not indicate "or". For example, C5/G. That's C5 slash G. This would indicate that we would alter a C5 chord by adding a G note as the lowest note as in the illustration below.
| Slash Chords
| Slash Chords
7
TESTING YOUR KNOWLEDGE
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
#7
#8
#9
8
POWER CHORDS IN ACTION
T H E I N F LU E N C E O F P O W E R C H O R D S
I hope you won't be surprised when I tell you that there are a ton of classic songs that use power chords as one of the primary creative tools. They can be found in virtually all types of music. Rock and metal music use them most of all. The main reason for this is that the power chord allows for a lot of distortion. It doesn't lose it's impact with the distortion added, whereas a full chord with the 3rd may be too dissonant with a lot of distortion. The easy chord form also allows for quick chord changes. In this chapter we'll look at some of the best power chord riffs of all time.
D O G E AT D O G
BY
ACDC
MAMA KIN
BY
AEROSMITH
IRON MAN
BY
B L A C K S A B B AT H
This is an awesome power chord based riff. It uses a lot of slides which is a great trick to add to your arsenal.
BY
BOSTON
COCAINE
BY
ERIC CLAPTON
Much of the rhythm guitar parts to Cocaine are handled with power chords.
O W N E R O F A L O N E LY H E A R
BY
YES
Even progressive rocker like Yes find ways to utilise power chords.
BY
BLITZKRIEG BOP
BY
THE RAMONES
J E S S I E ' S G I R L
BY
RICK SPRINGFIELD
Even soap opera actors turned musicians can't help playing those power chords.
BY
A L L T H E S M A L L T H I N G S 182
BY
BLINK
B E S T F R I E N D ' S G I R L
BY
THE CARS
9
STRUMMING SONGS WITH POWER CHORDS
You can strum through virtually any popular song using nothing but power chords. It's a bit of a cheat for most song because it will turn out to be a dumbed down version of the song, but there's no better way to get started when you're a beginner. We learned earlier that we can substitute a power chord for any other chord. This comes in handy when you don't know many chords. In this chapter we'll take strumming versions of popular songs and learn how to play them using only power chords.
B R O W N E Y E D G I R L
BY
VA N M O R R I S O N
Take the song Brown Eyed Girl by Van Morrison. It has G, C, and D chords. You can substitute with G5, C5, and D5. When we hit the chorus we'll find an Em chord. Don't panic, just substitute with E5.
SIMPLE MAN
BY
LY N Y R D S K Y N Y R D
In the song Simple Man we are dealing with C, G, Am, and Am7. We can substitute with power chords using C5, G5, A5, and A5 again.
H A L L E LU J A H
BY
JEFF BUCKLEY
This one has a lot of chords. We have C, Am, F, G, and Em. We can substitute with power chords using C5, A5, F, G, and E5.
A P P L I E S T O V I R T U A L LY A L L S O N G S
Substituting power chords is a great way to get started. You can use the methods we've discussed to play the songs you want. This comes with a strong warning: See a lot of players get caught in the power chord trap. They learn how to play power chords but fail to learn the real chords. This is a major mistake! Just because you can play a C power chord does not mean you know a C chord. As we said before, they aren't really chords anyway. Learning the full chords is a very important step. It doesn't matter what style of music you play in, you shouldn't avoid learning the real chords. Power chords allow you to get a running start to the world of music, but if you don't keep learning, they will become a crutch.
9
POWER CHORD RESOURCES
I hope you enjoyed this book and found it informative. I will periodically update the book. You can download the latest version at any time at the link below: http://guitaralliance.com/big-book-of-power-chords You'll also find helpful videos that deal with power chords, related topics, or just something that comes in handy. This concludes the big book on little ole power chords. Until next time, keep on learning! Sincerely, Kenny Mann