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.

A power chord is a two-note chord, with no major or minor quality to it. This is because power chords are just made up of the root and the fifth of the chord. The third of the chord, the part that usually gives the chord a major or minor quality, is left out of power chords. Don’t worry too much about the theory behind this though. What we want to do first is concentrate on getting familiar with the power chord shapes.

Let’s start with the first power chord shape. Place your index finger on the third fret of the low E string. When you’re playing power chords, the note you’re playing with your index finger will always be the root note of the chord. The root note is how we get the name for that specific power chord, so in this case, since our index finger is playing G note, this is a G power chord.

Now it’s pretty easy to follow the pattern to finish this power chord shape no matter where you are. Just go up two frets and over one string, putting your third finger down on that string, which here is the fifth fret of the A string. That finishes the shape of your power chord, and you can play it by strumming just the fifth and sixth strings.

The great thing about power chords is you can move them all around the fretboard. Get familiar with this shape, and practice moving it around the fretboard on the sixth string.

We’re going to make our next power chord shape by building off of the first one and just adding an extra note to it. It’s still just a two-note chord, but we’re going to double up on the root note.

Start with your G power chord again, and then add one higher octave of your root G note by placing your pinky finger on the fifth fret of the D string. If you pick each string, you’ll hear that we still have just a G note and a D note, but the third string now adds the extra G note in the higher octave.

When you play each of the power chords so far, you’ll notice that this three-string version is fuller sounding that the two strings version. This will give you another flavor you can use for your power chords. Work on getting this shape down so your fingers can go right to it. Fingers right behind the frets, and be able to move the chord anywhere along the fretboard.

The third power chord shape we’re going to learn is the same shape as the last power chord, but rather than playing the two high notes with two fingers, we’re going to take our pinky off the string. Instead, we’ll make a bar with our third finger so it actually plays both of those notes.

The guitar is a popular musical instrument classified as a string instrument with anywhere from 4 to 18 strings, usually having 6. The sound is projected either acoustically or through electrical amplification (for an acoustic guitar or an electric guitar, respectively). It is typically played by strumming or plucking the strings with the right hand while fretting (or pressing against the fret) the strings with the left hand. The guitar is a type of chordophone, traditionally constructed from wood and strung with either gut, nylon or steel strings and distinguished from other chordophones by its construction and tuning. The modern guitar was preceded by the gittern, the vihuela, the four-course Renaissance guitar, and the five-course baroque guitar, all of which contributed to the development of the modern six-string instrument.

There are three main types of modern acoustic guitar: the classical guitar (nylon-string guitar), the steel-string acoustic guitar, and the archtop guitar. The tone of an acoustic guitar is produced by the strings' vibration, amplified by the body of the guitar, which acts as a resonating chamber. The classical guitar is often played as a solo instrument using a comprehensive fingerpicking technique. The term fingerpicking can also refer to a specific tradition of folk, blues, bluegrass, and country guitar playing in the US.

Electric guitars, introduced in the 1930s, use an amplifier that can electronically manipulate and shape the tone. Early amplified guitars employed a hollow body, but a solid body was eventually found more suitable, as it was less prone to feedback. Electric guitars have had a continuing profound influence on popular culture.

The guitar is used in a wide variety of musical genres worldwide. It is recognized as a primary instrument in genres such as blues, bluegrass, country, flamenco, folk, jazz, jota, mariachi, metal, punk, reggae, rock, soul, and many forms of pop.Classical guitars; also known as Spanish guitars are typically strung with nylon strings, plucked with the fingers, played in a seated position and are used to play a diversity of musical styles including classical music. The classical guitar's wide, flat neck allows the musician to play scales, arpeggios, and certain chord forms more easily and with less adjacent string interference than on other styles of guitar. Flamenco guitars are very similar in construction, but are associated with a more percussive tone.

In Portugal, the same instrument is often used with steel strings particularly in its role within fado music. The guitar is called viola, or violão in Brazil, where it is often used with an extra seventh string by choro musicians to provide extra bass support.

In Mexico, the popular mariachi band includes a range of guitars, from the small requinto to the guitarrón, a guitar larger than a cello, which is tuned in the bass register. In Colombia, the traditional quartet includes a range of instruments too, from the small bandola (sometimes known as the Deleuze-Guattari, for use when traveling or in confined rooms or spaces), to the slightly larger tiple, to the full sized classical guitar. The requinto also appears in other Latin-American countries as a complementary member of the guitar family, with its smaller size and scale, permitting more projection for the playing of single-lined melodies. Modern dimensions of the classical instrument were established by the Spaniard Antonio de Torres Jurado (1817–1892).All three principal types of resonator guitars were invented by the Slovak-American John Dopyera (1893–1988) for the National and Dobro (Dopyera Brothers) companies. Similar to the flat top guitar in appearance, but with a body that may be made of brass, nickel-silver, or steel as well as wood, the sound of the resonator guitar is produced by one or more aluminum resonator cones mounted in the middle of the top. The physical principle of the guitar is therefore similar to the loudspeaker. The original purpose of the resonator was to produce a very loud sound; this purpose has been largely superseded by electrical amplification, but the resonator guitar is still played because of its distinctive tone. Resonator guitars may have either one or three resonator cones. The method of transmitting sound resonance to the cone is either a "biscuit" bridge, made of a small piece of hardwood at the vertex of the cone (Nationals), or a "spider" bridge, made of metal and mounted around the rim of the (inverted) cone (Dobros). Three-cone resonators always use a specialized metal bridge. The type of resonator guitar with a neck with a square cross-section—called "square neck" or "Hawaiian"—is usually played face up, on the lap of the seated player, and often with a metal or glass slide. The round neck resonator guitars are normally played in the same fashion as other guitars, although slides are also often used, especially in blues.Electric guitars can have solid, semi-hollow, or hollow bodies; solid bodies produce little sound without amplification. Electromagnetic pickups convert the vibration of the steel strings into signals, which are fed to an amplifier through a cable or radio transmitter. The sound is frequently modified by other electronic devices or the natural distortion of valves (vacuum tubes) in the amplifier. There are two main types of magnetic pickups, single- and double-coil (or humbucker), each of which can be passive or active. The electric guitar is used extensively in jazz, blues, R & B, and rock and roll. The first successful magnetic pickup for a guitar was invented by George Beauchamp, and incorporated into the 1931 Ro-Pat-In (later Rickenbacker) "Frying Pan" lap steel; other manufacturers, notably Gibson, soon began to install pickups in archtop models. After World War II the completely solid-body electric was popularized by Gibson in collaboration with Les Paul, and independently by Leo Fender of Fender Music. The lower fretboard action (the height of the strings from the fingerboard), lighter (thinner) strings, and its electrical amplification lend the electric guitar to techniques less frequently used on acoustic guitars. These include tapping, extensive use of legato through pull-offs and hammer-ons (also known as slurs), pinch harmonics, volume swells, and use of a tremolo arm or effects pedals.

The first electric guitarist of note to use a seven-string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps, who was a pioneer of this instrument.[citation needed] Solid body seven-strings were popularized in the 1980s and 1990s in part due to the release of the Ibanez Universe guitar,[citation needed] endorsed by Steve Vai. Other artists go a step further, by using an eight-string guitar with two extra low strings. Although the most common seven-string has a low B string, Roger McGuinn (of The Byrds and Rickenbacker) uses an octave G string paired with the regular G string as on a 12-string guitar, allowing him to incorporate chiming 12-string elements in standard six-string playing. In 1982 Uli Jon Roth developed the "Sky Guitar," with a vastly extended number of frets, which was the first guitar to venture into the upper registers of the violin. Roth's seven-string and 33-fret "Mighty Wing" guitar features a six-octave range.