5th (or Power) Chords

 5th (or Power) Chords

The technique I've been working on most recently is 5th notes, also refereed to as power chords on guitar. Power chords are the staple element of punk and metal music, known for their low sound with little to no highs, because, as Jon Buck words it in 10 Easy Ways to Play Guitar, "In a power chord you dispense with the 3rd note, leaving just the 1st and 5th notes, so the sound is very sparse" (80). 

The 5th chord, unlike every other chord, is more or less a shape, that you can re-arrange and put anywhere on the guitar. The 5th note shape looks like this:

Example of a 5th chord, G5

The shape is always first finger on a string, and then two frets away 3rd and 4th finger on the two strings beneath the string first finger is, with any strings besides the one your fingers are on muted. Once you have this shape down you can move it around to literally anywhere on the guitar without even needing to lift your fingers up, just slide it around. This makes songs that consist of all power chords easy to play, as once you have the shape and the hang of moving it around down, you can more or less play the whole thing.

Ironically, despite their reputation of being easy, I've struggled with power chords more than anything else. Originally I didn't have the finger strength to mute the unused chords, so I started only strumming the chords I wanted. This is really difficult, at least for me, and would oftentimes result in me hitting an extra string. To make up for this, I'd use my unused second finger to mute the string directly beneath the shape. You're not "supposed" to do this, and I've never heard of anyone else doing so, but there's nothing wrong with it and I definitely like it more. Even though I've now developed the finger strength to mute these strings with first finger like you're supposed too, I still prefer the sound of my method, because the three muted strings add a really noisy and unpleasant sound to the chord.

Even with this figured out, my chords don't sound like I'd like them too. I'm sure this is because I'm playing on an acoustic with no distortion when, as Jon Buck says it, "The reason these chords work so well with overdrive and distortion effects on an electric guitar is that the 3rd note often makes a chord sound muddy or discordant when played using these effects" (80). 

I've also struggled with actually moving the shape around, which is ironic, because it's supposed to be an easy skill. When moving the shape more than a few frets at a time, my fingers jam together, and the shape gets messed up, and then I have to spend time re-arranging it when I get to the fret I need to be at. I also have a hard time approximating how far I move my hands to get to a desired fret, although I'm sure that comes with time. If anyone else who's ever played guitar is here, what did you do to help with these two things?