Guitar Lessons

Lesson 6

In the fifth lesson you learned all about sus 4 chords and you learned some rock 'n' roll chords.

Now, let's look at chords that are often used in rock songs, especially in hard rock and metal songs. They are called power chords and should be played using 'overdrive'. If you have 'gain' on your amp, then turn them to the right as far as possible. A power chord always consists of the first and the fifth note of the scale. Okay, let's play some power chords now:

E power chord 		A power chord	 

E -------		E -------
B ------- 		B -------
G ------- 		G -------	
D ------- 		D ---9---	
A ---2---		A ---7---
E ---0--- 		E -------

As you can see, the E is the first note of the E scale, the B is the fifth note on the E scale. Only play the two strings that I indicated. So to play an E power chord, you should only play the E and the A string, etc. Okay, let's have a look at some more power chords:

    G     C     D

E -----|-----|-----||
B -----|-----|-----||
G -----|-----|-----||
D -----|--5--|--7--||
A --5--|--3--|--5--||
E --3--|-----|-----||

We can practise these power chords by playing the riff to a very well-known song of some decades ago, Smoke on the water by Deep Purple:

E -----------|--------------|-----------|--------||    
B -----------|--------------|-----------|--------||
G -----------|--------------|-----------|--------||    
D --2--5--7--|--2--5--8--7--|--2--5--7--|--5--2--||   
A --0--3--5--|--0--3--6--5--|--0--3--5--|--3--0--||   
E -----------|--------------|-----------|--------||     

This was the sixth guitar lesson. You can practise this at home until you understand exactly what I wrote here. The next lesson will be here soon!

Lesson 1Lesson 2Lesson 3 Lesson 4Lesson 5Lesson 6
Lesson 8
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If you have any questions, you can e-mail me at joice @ wxs .nl