The Chord Shape The Works Everywhere on Your Fretboard

So if you're into rock music and you've ever wanted to play rock songs but your chords are feeling a little too singer-songwriter or a little bit too soft, you could be missing this. So today what I'm going to show you in this video is the secret chord— it's not really a secret— the chord that is used the most in rock style music. You can do this on an acoustic guitar, you can do this on an electric guitar, guitar, and it's also a great way to substitute for bar chords in songs if you're not great at playing bar chords. So let's get into it. So these chords are used in thousands of rock songs, and they give you the flexibility with a simple shape to play chords all over the neck of your guitar, which is really, really cool. So if you feel like you're someone who's kind of stuck, you know, in the open position playing these really singer-songwriter country-esque um, open chords is what we call them— your G chord, your C chord, your D chord— where you're like, man, I really just wanna— I really just wanna rock on my guitar. Um, power chords are the secret behind that, and it's a slidable shape that you can move all over the guitar. So let's start with a couple of simple shapes. So essentially, a power chord is made up of 2 notes. So unlike our full chords, like our C chord, a G chord, those are made up of repetitions of 3 notes. We call them a triad, and we usually have major chords and minor chords. Now a power chord is neither major or minor, um, because it just has what we call in music a root note and a 5th. Okay, just a little theory for you. So usually when you see a power chord, you're going to see A5, D5, E5. That's going to indicate that we are playing a power chord versus like an A major chord. Okay, very, very, very, very different sound. Okay, so there's a shape here that we can move, and we're going to be playing the root note with our first finger. Okay, the root note is the note that gives the name to the chord. So if I'm playing an A5 chord, I want my first finger to be on an A note. Okay, if we're playing a G5 power chord, I want my first finger to be on a G note. And we're going to start on the top string of the guitar. Okay, Okay, this is where knowing the notes on your guitar can be helpful. And the great thing about the top E string is a lot of the natural notes sit on the dots. So I have the dots on the top of my guitar. You can't see in the front of my— this guitar, but on the top of my guitar, and probably on the top of yours, are some dots. Okay, the first fret is F, the third fret is G, the fifth fret is A, the seventh fret is B. Okay, and then when you get to the ninth fret, it changes. That's actually C sharp. But it's very easy for you to find those chords by just using your dots. So let's make an A5 power chord. So that means our first finger is gonna go to that A, which is the 5th fret on the top string, okay? And then what we're gonna do is we're gonna add a second note to it on the string right below, okay? This is gonna be our 5th. So this is our root, this is our 5th, okay? Those are just what the notes are called. This is going to be an A note, okay? And then down here, we just— so you know, this is an E note. Okay, so it's going to be our first finger and then our third finger on the seventh fret. So you're moving up two frets, down one string. This is your basic power chord shape. Okay, this is the simplest way to play your power chord. Okay, if you want a fuller sound, what you can do is you can put your pinky right below your third finger. So we have root, fifth, root. Okay. A, E, A. Okay, so it has just a little bit more of a sharper rock sound to it versus me playing, you know, that really open A string— okay, not open A string, that open A chord with all 5 strings. So it has a little bit more of a punch to it. So depending on where you are with your finger dexterity and your finger strength you could use the 2-finger version or the 3-finger version. Now, this is the tough part here that a lot of students have trouble with, is hitting the correct number of strings. Okay, so if you're playing the 2-finger version, you only want to hit 2 strings. Okay, if you're playing the 3-finger version, you only want to play 3 strings. You are— we are not— we're not strumming the entire guitar or it's gonna sound bad. All right, so Here's a tip: when I am playing power chords, my first finger is kind of gently resting on the other strings, almost like I'm playing a bar chord, but I have no pressure on it. So I'm just touching the strings lightly, just in case I catch these other strings, they do not ring through. This is especially important if you're playing an electric guitar through an amp, because amplifiers not only make things sound good, they amplify the good things, They also amplify the bad things. That's where an acoustic guitar is maybe a little bit more forgiving than an electric. So on electric guitar, you really, really have to be careful about muting the other strings. So let's put this together in a little progression so that I can show you how to move these chords on the A string. And then next, we're going to talk about how to make this same shape in different chords on the 5th string. All right, so what we're going to do is we're going to move from the A note, which is the 5th fret, to the B note, which is the 7th fret, to the G note, which is the 3rd fret. Okay, and we're gonna do 1, 2 on A, 3, 4 on B, 1, 2 on G, and then 3 on A. It's gonna sound like this. Ready? 1, 2, 3, 4. Okay, but before we go into actually playing. I want to show you something on the close-up that you may have noticed with my fingers. If you notice, I am sliding these fingers on these strings. They're not moving, and I'm just lifting the first finger to adjust for the change in depth of each fret. So you can see down here the frets are much wider than down here. So when we're sliding this shape, we're going to have to adjust the width of the power chord. So I leave the third and fourth fingers in place Or if you're just using your third finger, you're just going to slide your third finger, and then I'm using my first finger as the guide. Okay, so here we go. My first finger is my guide finger. 1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3, 4.

Again.

1, 2, 3, 4.

1, 2, on your own, ready, again. So that is power chords on your A string. What we're going to do is we're going to now put these power chords on the 5th string, okay? It's another string that we are going to move between. So if I look at my dots here on the 5th string, I'm looking at the dots 3, 5, 7. I have my C note, my D note, my E note. Okay, and then the 7th fret is F sharp. The B note here is the 2nd fret because the open string is A. So if A, B, C, D, E, F is then going to be the 8th, which makes F sharp, the 9th. Okay, just so you know some notes on the guitar there. Um, so what we're going to do now is we're going to do the same thing. So to make a C-shape power chord, we're going to do 1st and then 3rd up 2 frets, down 1. Okay, so it's the 3rd and the 5th. Okay, the 3rd fret, the 5th fret. And if you want to put the pinky below on that 5th fret of the G string, you can do that. Another note, some people like to bar. You can also bar those two together. I like doing it this way with my hand because it, it takes a little bit of the pressure off the palm. I find some people with power chords, um, they tend to over-squeeze when they bar. So doing the second and third, I think, is a much more relaxed way to do it. But either way is correct. So whether you use bar the third finger or three and 4. But for me, I feel— for a lot of my students, I work with a lot of older adults over the age of 50— for a lot of them, this tends to be a little bit more comfortable for their wrist. But play around and find what works best for you. So we're gonna do the same thing on this string. So we're gonna go D to E to C to E. Again, same frets: 5, 7, 3, 5. Same rhythm. And then we're gonna jump between the strings. All right, so we got one more exercise after this. We got one, two, three, four.

One, two, three, four. 1, 2, 3, 4. One, 2, 3, 4. 1, 2, 3,4. 1, 2, 3, four. 1, two, 3, 4. 1, two, 3,4. 1, two.

On your own. So there you go. You can see how we can just easily move this shape around the guitar. Now the trickier part is going jumping between strings, so that's what we're gonna do next. Okay, so we're actually gonna be moving from the 6th string to the 5th string. Okay, 5th to 6th string, 5th to 6th string. So I'm starting on the 3rd fret on the 6th string. I'm then moving all my fingers down one string to the 3rd fret on the C. Now I'm coming up in diagonal, I'm coming back up to the A, 5th fret. So 5 and 7, and then I'm moving everything down one to get to that D. Okay, so it's going to sound like this. Okay, let's give that a try. So we got 1, 2, 3, 4. Awesome. On that one, I played all, all downs. 1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 1, 2, 3, 4. But you can see now how you could move around the guitar, um, to play something really, really cool. So if you think of a song like, say, CCR's Fortunate Son. So you can hear how like the power chords just adds a little bit more punch to what you are playing. So now let's talk about some action steps about how you can actually go about practicing this. The first step is just to get used to the chord, okay? Whichever shape you want to do, and I would just get used to taking your hand off and going right to that shape on the guitar. Okay, so the first thing is just to get your hand familiar with the shape, okay? The next step would just be moving on one string, just like we did here today. Get the frets and the fingers moving between different frets, okay? So get those fingers moving between different frets on the guitar on the same string, okay? And then just get the fingers moving between the strings, okay? And then kind of like what we did with the exercise moving back and forth, up and down, all different ways with these chords. Because you can see at this point it has now opened the entire fretboard up to you to play chords. All right, so if you see— another tip here, another bonus— if you see an F chord and you're like, man, I really can't play this F bar chord, really stinks, play an F power chord instead. And you can't play a B minor bar chord, no problem, play a B5 power power chord, because power chords are neither major or minor, so it will work. It's a good fill-in if you are not great with bar chords just yet. And if you want to learn a really super cool technique that you can use on your power chords that you hear in a lot of rock music, um, accented rhythms, I highly recommend you go check out my mastering palm muting video right over there. I'm going to show you how to do this really, really cool technique that adds a a lot of fun dynamics to your playing. Go check that video out right over there.