Electric Guitar Day 9 - Green Day Style Power Chords

Welcome to day nine of this 10 day electric guitar challenge where we're looking today at how to play movable power chord shapes. We've currently looked at how to play one finger open power chords, E5 and A5. Today we're gonna look at how to play these with movable shapes, and we're gonna move this up and down the fretboard, and as you can hear. This is how to play so many classic rock riffs. Once you get this technique down, the world opens up to you when it comes to electric guitar, especially for rock genres, but this is used in pop and blues as well. And it's essentially starting off by playing the same chord as this one, the A5 power chord, but we're gonna place the index finger at fret 5, which is just here. Third finger or ring finger at fret 7, and then we have the option to add the little finger at fret 7 of string 4. And that is our power chord shape. Top tip is to have that first finger nice and relaxed but touching all the other strings so that these don't ring out. But as I say, we do have the option of a two finger power chord, and if you do struggle with the stretch, especially when we're gonna be moving this down the neck, you could play it with the little finger instead, and especially when we move down here and do wide fret power cords, that's a really good tip. Preferred option is 3 fingers, but whether you use 2 strings or 3 strings, it doesn't have a different name, it's still just a power chord dependent on where we start with the first finger, so this is an A. And when we start from there at the fifth fret, A, this is an A5 power chord, or just an A power chord for short. And when we move from here. Down to the 3rd fret. Then 2nd fret. First, and then play that E5 power chord. We can play the riff, an easy song, Brain Stew by Green Day. This is a massive influential riff, so simple, it kind of couldn't be simpler, but it's gonna really help us nail the song at day 10, the final song that we'll be looking at. That riff one more time to give us something to aim for goes like this, it goes. And it just repeats. And as with everything, there's a few tricks to this. To be able to do the stretch, the top tip with power chords in this fashion is keep that elbow into the side. That's the biggest tip for playing guitar in general. Keep your fretting hand elbow into the side, that puts everything on the right angle. Don't bend your wrist, keep your wrist pretty still, you wanna be bending from the knuckles to be able to fret the guitar, so I'm kind of holding the guitar like this, keeping that first finger pretty straight and flat, right up. Against the fret wire of fret 5, but with fingers 3 and 4, quite curled over, and that again is helped by the elbow being into the side. If the elbow's not into the side, those little fingers and third finger cannot reach over there. Keep your elbow into the side is the top tip. And we strum down, up, and then mute. We mute and silence with this hand, but also we can relax with this hand, and that's how we get this kind of idea, which is a really cool thing. That only happens if we're still touching all the strings, but lightly. So that A5 power chord, you could even do it with two down strums if you want to keep it super simple. Down, down. And that's the first chord. What we then want to get used to, and I'm totally relaxed now, my fingers are still on string 65, and 4, but I can now slide down two frets, and we wanna slide our fingers a bit like an abacus, where we're not lifting the fingers at all, we're keeping them perfectly still, move it down one fret and then another to 35 and 5. And we do another down up strum. Alright. Now that could be too wide for you, you know, to get the stretch in your hand, so the little finger is always an option, but let's try and do this one as a default, and remember, once you've done down up or two down strums, relax. Keep your fingers still, but keep them relaxed, and if you strum and you're relaxed right, you'll get that sound. That kind of sound. I'm just on the brown sound setting here on the Boscatana, by the way, everything at uh 5 out of 10, everything at midnight. That's broadly been the amp settings throughout this course as well. Then what we do, a bit more challenging, we're gonna slide this down to 24 and 4. And then 13 and 3. And then we're finished with that E5 power chord. So as we do this, we're getting more of a stretch and we're starting at 5. Just keep your eye on that first finger. It goes to 3. And then 2 One And then first finger down to play E, you could do it with two down strums to keep it easier. 34. Those last two, when we start to repeat this, those last two are faster, so it's to a count of 12341 and 2342 and 23432342341. So it kind of all happens at the end, which is quite common with guitar riffs as well, so that was from F. To there. Let me demo all of that with perhaps the easier 2 fingers. Or with the 1st and little finger, 1st and 3rd. Here's one more shout at this, here we go, 234. Now with the 1s and little finger, 1234. And that is how to play Brain Stew by Green Day. Now, there is one thing that you need to know if you want to play that along to the original recording, which is you'll need to get your guitar in E-flat tuning. It just means de-tuning your guitar by half a step for each of the strings. Everything is then played exactly the same. This is a real crucial rock technique. I will. Leave the video for that where I talk you through exactly how to do that and demo a whole bunch of riffs that are in this E-flat tuning or half a step down tuning. That is in the video immediately below this one further down the page. I'll also leave another video which teaches power chords more in depth. Perhaps uh slow it if this is the first time you've ever come across power chords in this. Moveable shape, there's a bonus video down there. Both of those videos are from the full Andy guitar Beginner's Electric course, where we've got a more comprehensive course going a little bit more bite size in more incremental steps. This is from one of the higher levels, as is the E-flat tuning video, but I wanted to show it because it's so crucial, and that's the end. Of day 9. I hope you'll check out those videos to get the help you need, and then when you're ready, I will see you for day 10 of this 10 day guitar challenge, setting you up for life, getting you started in the right way with electric guitar, where we're learning our final song and our final riff, which I promise you, it's an absolute banger. I'll see you over there when you're ready. Bye bye for now.