Awesome Power Chord Songs

Beginner Grade 2 Module 12: Rock Power Chords & Techniques
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A few points:

  • It’s totally fine to pursue learning power chord songs at the expense of other things for awhile. Power chords help build your hand strength for things like the F barre chord, plus it makes you happy, which is what this is really all about.

  • If you spend the next few months doing nothing but play power chord songs on your electric, then it might take a few practice sessions to get comfortable with your acoustic again and to remember the “acoustic” songs you were playing, but that’s OK. Everything we practice has a synergistic effect; time spent with your hands on the instrument is the most important thing.

  • Although your overall skills development may progress faster if you balance the two (50% on learning power chord songs, 50% on other practice items), who cares? As long as you’re not wasting your time working on skills that are way beyond your current capabilities (such as practicing sweep arpeggios when you still can’t strum the old Faithfull pattern), anything you do on your guitar will make you a better player.

YMMV

4 Likes
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I feel like we could work this one out mostly ourselves.

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Since I’m hanging out on this Rock Guitar module, I wanted to start doing a little more with the minor pentatonic than just running up and down the scale.

The solo to Cocaine so far has been a blast to learn! I find a video that plays the song at half speed and shows tabs of the notes being played. It’s really just straight ahead E Minor pentatonic that we can play at the 12th fret.

There are some more advanced techniques in the solo (bends, vibrato, two note bends, two note bends with vibrato), but it’s worth playing around with to get familiar with how to phrase a solo using the minor pentatonic.

First part of the solo uses only 3 notes! But it’s so soulful.

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A perfect song for this module is So What by P!nk. The iconic riff is based on the first position of the minor pentatonic (F# minor instead of A Minor, that is 2-5 on 6th string instead of 5-8) and the chorus is all easy powerchords! I have been having lots of fun with that song.

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thank you!!! Good recomendation! I forgot about that song, I think the last time I heard it was like in 2010. I tried it and its so much fun to learn, easy and can give you some more confidence with these power chords.