How To Use Power Chords For Beginners

It may take some time for you to memorize, and that’s okay, because you’re already working on things that will help you memorize it. By working on your power chords through this lesson and as a part of your daily practice, you’ll start to memorize all the notes on the low E string.

What we’re going to do next is play the two-note version of the G power chord we learned in the last lesson. Remember that the note you’re playing with your index finger is the root note of the power chord, so with your index finger on the third fret here, we’ve got a G note and a G power chord.

The cool thing about power chord is that they are movable to anywhere along the fretboard, as long as your index finger is on the sixth or fifth string. The name of the power chord will simply change based on the where your index finger is. So if I move my power chord a couple of frets so that my index finger is on the first fret, this would be an F power chord, which you see labeled on the graphic on-screen.

Let’s try moving the power chord again. Put your index finger on the fifth fret of the low E string and finish your power chord shape. Based on the graphic on-screen, you can see that we’re now playing an A power chord. This may seem simple to you so far, and if it does, that’s awesome. You’ll be able to play tons of power chords just by moving the shapes around.

If this seems a little harder for you, the challenging part of this is memorizing the root notes on the low E string. Try starting out with the natural notes first, because those will come easier to you. As you practice more, then you’ll start to learn where the sharp and flat notes are too.

I mentioned earlier that you can play your power chords on your sixth string or fifth string. We’ve got a new graphic on screen at this point to show the note names on the A string, and you’ll see the note progression is the same as the low E string. The only difference is that it starts with an A note instead of an E.

Let’s try playing a power chord on the A string. Place your index finger on the fifth fret of the fifth string, and then your third finger on the seventh fret of the third string. Looking at the graphic, since your index is finger is on the fifth fret, you’re playing a D power chord.

Just like power chords on the sixth string, you can move this power chord up and down the fretboard to anywhere you like. If you move your power chord shape to have your index finger on the third fret of the fifth string, you’re now playing a C power chord.

After all this, you might be wondering why we would learn to play power chords on both the sixth and fifth string. Let’s look at a quick example of the value of using both strings. If I wanted to play a common G-C-D power chord progression and I only used the sixth string, you can see in the video that my hand has to move pretty far up the fretboard from the second fret, to the eighth, and then to the tenth. So it is possible, but it’s a lot of shifting around to worry about.

Using both the sixth and fifth string for chord progressions like this is more efficient because you won’t have to jump around so much. If I start on my G power chord again at the third fret, I can move to the C using the fifth string at the third fret still, and then finish with my D power chord on the fifth fret of the fifth string.

From watching the video and trying it out yourself, you can see how much more efficient it is to use both the low E and A strings to play power chords. As you work through them, be sure to work on playing the power chords cleanly.

The guitar is an ancient and noble instrument, whose history can be traced back over 4000 years. Many theories have been advanced about the instrument's ancestry. It has often been claimed that the guitar is a development of the lute, or even of the ancient Greek kithara. Research done by Dr. Michael Kasha in the 1960's showed these claims to be without merit. He showed that the lute is a result of a separate line of development, sharing common ancestors with the guitar, but having had no influence on its evolution. The influence in the opposite direction is undeniable, however - the guitar's immediate forefathers were a major influence on the development of the fretted lute from the fretless oud which the Moors brought with them to to Spain.

The sole "evidence" for the kithara theory is the similarity between the greek word "kithara" and the Spanish word "quitarra". It is hard to imagine how the guitar could have evolved from the kithara, which was a completely different type of instrument - namely a square-framed lap harp, or "lyre".

It would also be passing strange if a square-framed seven-string lap harp had given its name to the early Spanish 4-string "quitarra". Dr. Kasha turns the question around and asks where the Greeks got the name "kithara", and points out that the earliest Greek kitharas had only 4 strings when they were introduced from abroad. He surmises that the Greeks hellenified the old Persian name for a 4-stringed instrument, "chartar". The earliest stringed instruments known to archaeologists are bowl harps and tanburs. Since prehistory people have made bowl harps using tortoise shells and calabashes as resonators, with a bent stick for a neck and one or more gut or silk strings. The world's museums contain many such "harps" from the ancient Sumerian, Babylonian, and Egyptian civilisations. Around 2500 - 2000 CE more advanced harps, such as the opulently carved 11-stringed instrument with gold decoration found in Queen Shub-Ad's tomb, started to appear.A tanbur is defined as "a long-necked stringed instrument with a small egg- or pear-shaped body, with an arched or round back, usually with a soundboard of wood or hide, and a long, straight neck". The tanbur probably developed from the bowl harp as the neck was straightened out to allow the string/s to be pressed down to create more notes. Tomb paintings and stone carvings in Egypt testify to the fact that harps and tanburs (together with flutes and percussion instruments) were being played in ensemble 3500 - 4000 years ago.At around the same time that Torres started making his breakthrough fan-braced guitars in Spain, German immigrants to the USA - among them Christian Fredrich Martin - had begun making guitars with X-braced tops. Steel strings first became widely available in around 1900. Steel strings offered the promise of much louder guitars, but the increased tension was too much for the Torres-style fan-braced top. A beefed-up X-brace proved equal to the job, and quickly became the industry standard for the flat-top steel string guitar.

At the end of the 19th century Orville Gibson was building archtop guitars with oval sound holes. He married the steel-string guitar with a body constructed more like a cello, where the bridge exerts no torque on the top, only pressure straight down. This allows the top to vibrate more freely, and thus produce more volume. In the early 1920's designer Lloyd Loar joined Gibson, and refined the archtop "jazz" guitar into its now familiar form with f-holes, floating bridge and cello-type tailpiece.

The electric guitar was born when pickups were added to Hawaiian and "jazz" guitars in the late 1920's, but met with little success before 1936, when Gibson introduced the ES150 model, which Charlie Christian made famous.

With the advent of amplification it became possible to do away with the soundbox altogether. In the late 1930's and early 1940's several actors were experimenting along these lines, and controversy still exists as to whether Les Paul, Leo Fender, Paul Bigsby or O.W. Appleton constructed the very first solid-body guitar. Be that as it may, the solid-body electric guitar was here to stay.