Hi guys! Welcome to the lesson. So, in today’s mini video guitar lesson, we’re going to learn some rock. So, if you are the sort of person who’s an electric guitarist and if you like bands like Rage Against Machine, or Fu Fighters, or Green Day, or old school stuff like Guns and Roses, or Metallica. Then this is definitely the lesson for you. You’re really going to enjoy this because we’re going to learn power chords. Now you may already know what power chords are, but I’m going to show you some other stuff, and I’m going to teach you another technique too, called palm muting, which you are going to find really useful, and you’ll realize it’ll make your playing sound a whole lot better.
So, power chords, just to explain quickly, are simple chord that just consists of two notes. And what we do is move around the guitar neck like this, and is really is as simple as that. And the other thing I want to tell you is we’re going to use a rock song today, so what I mean by that is we’re going to put the distortion on our amp, now all amps are different, some of them are buttons you can press or some of you have perplexed pedals, you know, so you could create distortion like that. But we want to get this rock sound.
Now that was a little example of power chords and you can see that I was just moving this shape around. All right and you can create really cool stuff like that really easily, so let’s get on with it. I want to explain it straight away. So if we take our first finger and put it on the 6th string of fret 7, the first finger is known as the root note or the base note. And what happens is we always take another finger and put it 2 frets higher on the next string. So, just to make it perfectly clear, this finger is on the 6th string of fret 7, this finger is on the 5th string of fret 9, so hold them down nice and tight, and with the plectrum I want you to pluck both those strings, the 6th and the 5th string.
Now obviously I’ve got the distortion on my amp, so don’t worry if you haven’t got that distortion sound yet. You can worry about that another time, but what’s most important at the moment is that you get these 2 notes. Okay, good, now what I’m going to ask you to do is to try moving it down the neck, so what I mean by that is the 1st finger, the root note is now on the 6th string at fret 5, and this other finger is now on the 5th string of fret 7. Okay, now move it down 2 more frets, so we got the 6th string at fret 3, and the 5th string at fret 5. Okay, so just try those 3 chords now, root note at fret 7, at fret 5, and then fret 3. And then try taking it down 1 more fret, so you’re on the 6th string at fret 2, and the 5th string fret 4. Now, I think you get the idea by now, that these notes are always 2 frets apart like this, and always 1 string apart obviously. So, from now on, you’ll hear me mostly referred to just the root note, and I’ll expect you to realize that this other finger goes on this note here. So just try that sequence once more. Okay, good.
Now another thing you can try is to pluck 4 x on each chord, and you’ll hear that, that would make it sound a bit more interesting. Well for those of you out there that are punk rockers, you can pluck to 8 x on each chord and play it a little bit faster, like this. Okay, I think you get the idea, good. So, obviously, you can experiment with that. You can change the number of repetitions that you pluck, and you can also move around to different chord shapes, and you know, start to make up your own songs and make up your own chord sequences.
Now, this other technique that I wanted to teach you by today is known as palm muting. And we’re going to look at our right hand, it’s a little bit similar to the chop, if you think back earlier in the e-course, where I taught you to strum down-up, chop-up, it’s a very similar principle. And what I’m going to ask you to do is to use the palm of your hand to gently touch the strings just a little bit, and what you can do is pluck the power chord, and you can hear that it’s muted, the sound is dead in there, okay. Because if weren’t touching the strings at all, it would sound like this. But if we touch them just a little bit with the flesh of the palm of our hand, it sounds like this.
Now, the trick is to have your palm just right next to the bridge, only touching the string, the tiny little bit, because what happens if you move your hand too far along, it will just kill the notes completely, and you won’t hear anything. And so, what you want to do is experiment, move your hand too far along, and then move it too far back, and then just find a happy medium where it sounds like this. Okay, good. So, I want you to apply that palm muting technique now to the little power chord sequence that we just learned. So, plucking 4 x on each one, it should sound like this. So if I speed that up to a full, you know, punk rock speed. And you can start to get the idea now because I was strumming 8 x on each one then.
So I leave that up to you to have a bit of an experiment with that and see what it sounds like. And also like I said just now, do have a go at writing your own songs, I think you’re at a stage now where you can start to create your own stuff. So, the good thing about power chords is you can move them all over the place, but you can also change strings, so instead of using the 6th string and the 5th string you can use the 5th string and the 4th string, and it’ll still work. Obviously you got to pluck the corresponding strings with your plectrum now, you know, pluck the 5th and 4th string. And always just making that up there as I went along and you can do exactly the same, it really is that simple. Good, so I hope you’re excited by that. Bear in mind what I said about the palm muting, and experiment using it with and without palm muting. Go and write your own songs now, move these chords around. Practice strumming quickly, and also, just going back to basics quickly, make sure these fingers you’re holding down right next to the fret. Because some people will start to forget, and they end up moving their fingers away or accidentally having them on top of the fret, and that’s really no good. Make sure they’re right next to the fret, exactly where they should be.
So, well done for making it this far in the e-course, and also in the meantime, if you find this really easy, and you want to learn other songs, you know if you like Guns and Roses, Metallica, Green Day, Rage Against the Machine, anything like that. There are loads of songs on the archive, where I’ll teach you a full length video guitar lesson of how to play any of those songs you want to learn. So, go and check it out. See if there’s anything that really takes your fancy, and you can start to build a repertoire of stuff, you know, so you could either play with a band or you can play it to other people, you know, a party or something. So, go and get on with it. Go and get practicing and take your time. Be patient. Do it thoroughly. It’ll all be worth it in the end, I promise you that. Okay, I’ll see you in a few days for the next segment in this course, bye-bye.
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