Music Theory vs. Instrument Playing Technique and Ability

Cool, huh?

Ok… Fun time. Move this chord all up and down the neck of the guitar. Play it in every different position to see what it sounds like.

Now that you know if you move the FMajor chord up two frets, it becomes a GMajor chord. If you move it up two MORE frets, what chord do you think THAT one is? Hmmm…. The Mighty All-Purpose Power Chord

I love this chord. This is the chord of rock. If you have ever heard any song with a nasty heavy thick sounding guitar, you can bet the guy is using power chords.

A power chord looks like this:

Pretty simple, huh? You normally only use two fingers to play a power chord. The index finger is on the lowest string, and either the ring or pinky finger presses the other two strings down. The beauty of this chord is that it can move up or down the neck just like the FMajor chord you learned.

The chord above is a BMajor (BM), but slide it up one fret and it becomes a CMajor (CM) like this:

Yep, you already know another CMajor chord, don’t you? Play them both and compare. The first CMajor you learned sounds very big and “jangly”, this one sounds very focussed and hard, doesn’t it?

OK, on an acoustic guitar a Barre chord might not sound all ~that~ impressive, but wait until you try it on an electric guitar with some distortion! Oh, Nirvana!

Just like the FMajor chord, every time you move a power chord up or down the neck of the guitar, you are actually playing a different chord. You are just using the same fingering pattern.

Can you figure out where the DMajor position of the power chord is? The power chord has one other trick up it’s sleeve… You can move it one string lower on the guitar.

If you take the same fingering pattern and move it to the lowest 3 strings on the guitar, you have just opened up a whole new range of chords… All without having to learn any new finger patterns at all!

Check these out:

 

 

Look really close at those chord names: FMajor (FM) and GMajor (GM). I’ll wait here while you realize that you already know these chord names from earlier…

Again, these are just different ways to finger the same chords, but if you compare them, you will realize that they all have a different sound.

With that, I will leave you here to play all three GMajor (GM) chords you know, and wonder why they all have the same name, and sound kind of the same, but have a totally different tone… That is the topic for a later discussion.

For now, try out those Barre chords, and get used to how they sound. If you hear a song on the radio, try using your Barre chords to figure out a chord or two of what they are playing… You might be amazed!