Preface (skip if this isn’t your first time here): 

THERE ARE TOO MANY PEOPLE WHO DON’T KNOW ANYTHING USEFUL ABOUT THE GUITAR!

It’s because no one either showed them anything useful or they never found out the basics of playing guitar.

DON’T BE LIKE THEM! 

Here we are going to talk about those guitar basics in bite-sized chunks. 

Hopefully, this will give you everything necessary to understand how to play the instrument, fix any flaws in your playing, and form ideas on how to change things up in your technique. 

You can play easy chords. You can play songs with these easy chords. So you’re probably thinking, “I’m ready to play the real chords now.” 

Well, YOU’RE WRONG! 

You’re not ready. There’s still one more type of chord you need to learn before you can pass onto the next level. 

And now… What you will learn today…. Is the basis of all rock music… The coolest… The most jammable… Some might say, “The Most Powerful Chords of ALL TIME!” 

That’s right folks, you are going to learn POWER CHORDS!!!

For these chords, you’re going to want to use a pick. When you pluck the strings, you want to play using the two to three strings involved. Only play one string at first. If you can only play one string easily, then add a little more “power,” but not too much. That should make two strings vibrate.

Boom! You got this. Let’s start with these single finger power chords: 

These are the baddest power chords on block. Talk about that bass. Let’s try to play those power chords like this: 

Here’s the tabbed version of what you just played above. Make sure you understand how to read this. 

Notice how they’re all the same except for the strings you pluck? You also use your 1st finger to play every chord.

The only difference here is that you don’t need to play on your fingertips to make these chords sound good. In fact, these chords will probably sound better if you lazily use your finger pad like the picture below. We’ll get more into it in the next post. In the meantime, let’s play this little blues song.

Remember you have a several goals here:

1. Understand what you’re looking at.

2. Make everything sound good.

3. Be able to play through the song without pausing.

Next, we will be going over 2 finger power chords.