Power chords

If you have ever listened to any rock or metal music you will have certainly heard power chords before. They are simple chords made up of two notes which sound great when played with distortion.

If you try playing a jazz chord or any chord for that matter with distortion you will soon know that they sound horrible. The way around this is to play chords with very few notes and with intervals of either fifths or fourths. A power chords contains two notes the root and fifth. Despite only containing two notes they are a really important part of rock and metal rhythm guitar.

One important part of making these power chords sound really heavy is to use palm muting. Palm muting is where you rest you picking hand on the strings to mute them giving a chugging type of sound when played with distortion. Experiment with resting your picking hand on the strings as you pick to try and make the chords sound tighter and more focused.

For most hard rock bands power chords form the basis of the rhythm guitar parts.

Exercise 1

Exercise 1 is a simple powerchord riff. The chords used for this exercise are E5, F5 and G5. You can try adding slides between the chords for an interesting effect. Try and play the exercise using palm muting and plenty of distortion.