How to Play Guitar Power Chords

Video Transcript

"Hi, my name is Derek Tarnow, I've been playing guitar for twelve years, and I teach and perform. In this segment I'm going to discuss power chords. If you're a rock guitarist worth anything at all, you know power chords, because it's probably mostly what you play. Sometimes, you know, some rock bands get a little bit more adventurous and stuff, and that's cool. But for the most part, power chords make up a great deal of it. Power chords are cool, because they're easy. You can, you know, if you really try, you can probably learn power chords in, you know, two or three hours, and then you'll be set to play, you know, punk rock, and you know, basic rock stuff. So, the way you start by playing a power chord, is, you find your root note. We'll start with G, just because it fits well on guitar. Anyway. So this is your G note. And you skip a fret. And fret that note with your third finger, or your ring finger. And below that, you put your pinkie, or your fourth finger. And when you strum, you only play the three notes. What I like to do when I play power chords, is I just kind of mute the rest of the strings, because chances are, I'm not like, sitting down when I'm playing power chords, you know, rocking out when I'm playing power chords. So I'm going to be moving around, and you know, it's just easier to mute the strings then only play those three. The same applies if you're playing a power chord based off the fifth string, or the A string. So on a C, power chord, you can play it like this. And you can see, like that finger kind of goes over, and then the rest kind of meet the rest of the strings. And the only thing you really hear, is the strings I'm holding down. And power chords, a lot of bar chords, you just move them around. They go everywhere. If you were to, if you wanted to, you can make power chords up to like, the D string. This is not common at all. I don't think I've ever really heard anybody do this. But you could play them here. Or you could play them like this, based off of the G string. After that, you can only get the three and the fifth, and you can't play anything else because you're out of strings. Power chords are also known as five chords. It's an important thing to know if you're just looking stuff up on Internet, and looking at how to play tunes and they say to play a five chord. They're talking about power chords. There's also some neat tricks you can do with power chords. A lot of bands so stuff like this. And that's just kind of fun, and you know, good thing to know if you're wanting to learn rock."