Some guitar tricks...part 4.Guitar tricks: Power chords The guitar power chords chart is a useful tool for beginner (and all level) guitar players. The guitar power chords chart is a list of guitar power chords also known as 5th chords. What are guitar power chords? 5th chords are simple chords with a lot of power. They are simple because they are made up of only two note types (Sometimes there are three notes held down but that's because one note type is held down twice. For example, sometimes you must hold down two B notes and an E note to make a B 5 chord. Let's look into the music theory in more detail. A guitar power chord is made up of the 1st and 5th notes of a major scale. What does that mean? Well, let's look at the C scale. It's made up of the notes C, D, E, F, G, A, and B. We can use a C scale to construct a C 5 chord (We can also use a D scale to construct a D 5 etc.) The C note is the 1st note and the D note is the 2nd note. Do you see the pattern? Therefore, we can conclude that a guitar power chord is made up of the C and G notes because they are the 1st and 5th notes in the C major scale. How about chord progressions? How do we know which 5th chords sound good together? Guitar tricks: A common chord progression in rock music is the I - IV - V chord progression. The I - IV - V chord progression is the 1, 4, 5 chord progression. It's very easy really. Let's look at an example. We want to play a C chord progression with power chords. Therefore, we look at the C scale. We can see that the 1,4, and 5th notes are C, F, and G. Therefore we will play a C5, F5 and G5 in the key of C. The same goes obviously with other chord progressions in the keys of D, F, G etc. Guitar tricks: However, understanding music theory is not absolutely important to guitar players. If we have a guitar power chords chart, basic open guitar chord chart, barre chord chart then we should do well. Guitar power chords are a must to play popular music these days. They certainly rock. Early pioneering rock bands created these chords by dropping the 3rd note for a bigger punch. I would advise learning a few power fifth chord progressions. You don't need to know all of them. A few will do fine. Even jazz and folk players can benefit from learning power chords for those occasional odd sounds they might need and just to be a well rounded guitar player. So if you play guitar then get out your guitar power chords chart! Author: Jason Y http://www.freemusicstudy.com Recommended guitar learning resources: Learn Guitar Resource 1: Jamorama- http://www.jamorama.com Click for more guitar tricks. |