Guitar Power Chords and Substitutions Video Lecture - The Ultimate Guitar

of all the chords that aren't chords
power chords are my favorite chords that
sentence didn't make any sense but it's
true - technically be a chord by
definition you have to have three
separate notes a power chord as you may
know is only two notes so we're going to
talk about what makes the power chord
and different substitutions that you can
use instead of power chords so you're
not just playing them all the time
so what is it well technically it's a 1
and a 5 now let me explain what that
means let's take the fifth fret on the
e-string this is an a note I'm going to
play the a major scale one two three
four five six seven eight a B C sharp d
e f sharp g sharp neg now I'm going to
play the a minor scale
ABCD efg a now if you notice if we
counted all those out if you go from the
one to the five one two three four five
the one is a and the five is e in the
minor scale if we do in the major scale
one two three four five the one is a and
the five is e so a power chord is a one
and five and played together now the
great thing about it is it is neither
major nor minor because what makes a
chord major minor is the third one two
three and minor scale this is the third
it would be a C and the major scale the
third would be a C sharp so what's
really helpful about power chords is you
don't have to know anything about music
theory you don't even really know you
don't really even need to know what key
you're in to use them because whether
it's major minor is inconsequential as
far as the court is concerned so most of
you probably already know this shape
right here with the 1 and the 5 now you
can add your pinky right behind it
to add the eight okay now on both scales
the eight is also the same because it's
an octave of the first note so I'm
having an A and E and another a we can
have as many as and ease as we want
combined and there's still gonna be a
power chord and you may see this on
tablature or notated in a way it says a5
that's what this means in a and it's 5th
right a 5 1 5 saying this is a charge B
so on and so forth right so let's talk
about an inversion that you can use for
a power chord as a replacement or a
substitute now an inversion is just any
chord where the root note isn't the
first note that you play so let's move
down a string and let's do an e power
chord right so this is rooted on the
seventh fret of the a string and then I
have my 5 right here which is a B e f G
a B so at E Plus Abby you make a power
chord right now in version of this we'll
be putting the B first
so instead of having to be here we're
going to octave down and play the B on
the low E string which is a 7th fret so
instead of playing this chord as an e
power for we're playing this chord and
it gives you like a lower thicker sound
right so anytime you want to root here
you can just think of having the root
beneath the 5 and that's an inversion of
a power chord now if everything you're
playing is power chords you're playing
might sound a little stale so here's
something that we can substitute with
it's just as easy if not easier than
chords but we're still going to use a
little bit of music theory to make
different shapes ok so we're going to
keep that same root note the fifth fret
a right so as we said before this is
just an a5 and a power chord is neither
major nor minor now we can make it major
a minor by taking the 5 and changing it
to a 3rd as far as a chord is concerned
the only difference between a major
chord and minor chord is the 3rd the
major chord has the 3 in it right 1 2 3
and so an A and a c-sharp as a major
chord a minor chord has a flat 3rd a
flat 3 so instead of c-sharp it would be
C now here's 1 2 3 and so there's the C
we can't play in both at the same time
because we're on the same string so
going to move this C to the a string
right here so our substitution that
you can use for an a power port is if
you're doing a major one you can just do
this middle finger 5e pointer finger for
Enya and this is a movable shape just
like anything else as long as you just
play these two strings now you already
know the shape cuz you probably played a
G major chord so if you just stop it
short it's just these two you have a
movable shape
so just by flattening the third going
back a frat and now you probably want to
use a different finger like this now you
can make a minor chord and again kind of
like we said before a chord has to be at
least three notes so this is just two
notes why is it minor because v is
implied v is what's called a perfect
interval because it's the same in both
scales so we have a one and a minor
third v is being implied but we're still
kind of calling it a chord even though
technically it doesn't satisfy the
definition of that so how is this useful
to you well if you're playing an
electric guitar
if you're maybe like a practice amp for
cheap ramp or something like that and
you use open chords that you might use
on an acoustic guitar let's do a
progression like a minor G major C major
and a minor and you just play them like
an acoustic guitar
it doesn't really sound great it sounds
kind of messy there's a lot of
frequencies competing for each other the
open strings on a distorted amplified
electric guitar don't really have the
same effect as an acoustic guitar would
so they kind of tighten up that sound
we're going to replace these cords right
so we're gonna start with this a minor
and we're gonna do the replacement
voicing that we talked about right here
so the e on the a string is the seventh
fret right so we're going to root on the
seventh fret and do the flat third we're
going to add that flat third to make it
mine so instead of E minor we have E
minor here all right this is the
progression we went from E minor to a G
major so let's do the same thing we
could take this u major just right here
we could go from E minor to G major but
I wanted to add a higher one right so
let's take the major voicing and root it
on the 10th fret of the a string which
is a G right so we're going to go from E
minor to G major and then we went to a C
major before the open chord Waya now
since we're in this G major right here
we're really close to a traditional
power chord routed on a C which is the
8th fret of the E string so all we have
to do is jump back to a regular power
chord there and then we're going to
finish it off by doing a minor chord
with that minor third voicing routed on
the active a of the a string right
here's the twelfth fret so instead of
so
and that sounds a lot cleaner on a
distorted electric guitar venture now
another way you can use this is if
you're in a band with maybe two guitar
players and one of them is playing open
chords you can just use this to tighten
up the sound where you're not both
playing the same thing and then you have
to be in like perfect perfect rhythm to
get it some decent at all so there's
different ideas that you can use when
you're playing a song also to if maybe
it's the same chord progression over and
over again you want to make it sound
different either playing an acoustic
guitar you can play the power chord
voicings for a more low-key part of the
song because you're only playing two
notes at a time so it's not going to be
as loud like you could go from the E
minor
or even play like one string at a time
kind of like a riff
into the bigger core right so there's
just different things that you can think
about for substituting in different
shapes to get the same effect and
they're just as easy because it's still
just a two no cord just two fingers that
are pretty close to each other so to
review we've got a power Florida and
let's just do them all on this e so 7:00
a.m. so we have the traditional power
chord we have the inversion we have the
major version and the minor version
there you go