This lesson was so fun and easy to get the hang of power chords this has opened up so many song variety’s cant wait to be able to play some songs with these power chords!! 
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Welcome mattia, glad you’re having fun.
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This is so much fun! 
I learned power cords some 20 years ago, but I’m currently on a guitar re-learning journey. For the first time in my life I now know the names of the cords! 
With that said. At 50% of the original speed Basket case with Green day is still a struggle. But a very fun one. 
What song are you all struggling with ?
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Oh yes, you are right, Rudi. Power Chords are lots of fun 
Just like you I’m struggling with Basket Case, too. 
If you like Green Day, maybe you would like to try “Hitchin’ a Ride” first.
This song is much easier, you can just slide down on the 6th string with B, A, G# and G repeated over and over in the intro and the verses and then a slightly different chord progression in the chorus: E, F#, B, A, G#, G, E, F#, B, A, G#, G, …
This one had been my first song with power chords, and it is very helpful to learn the notes on the thickest string.
Justin has great tutorials for some more Green Day songs.
At the moment I’m learning “When I come around”. This one is great for string crossing - and loads of fun, too 
Cheers,
Gunhild 
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Heck yeah power chords are great and they really open everything up. Welcome to the site @MF_1010 If you say the chord name when practicing them it will speed up your memorization of the notes on the fret board as well, at least for the E and A string. It did for me at least.
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Should we be practicing power chords with distortion? Justin used distortion in his video, but I’m not sure if that’s just for demo purposes.
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Give it a try without, with a little, and with a lot. I found I liked to hear something similar to what I wanted to play. You will find that using a lot of distortion will hide some mistakes - like buzzing a string - but make others stand out more - like poorly muting strings and squeaks moving to a new fret.
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I was hoping for a more direct answer, like “you should definitely do X when you practice”, but oh well…
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Hi @barny, I’m not much farther along learning than you, but here’s my approach: I play everything clean. I figure I need to be able to execute techniques well, and it seems the best way to learn to do that is with no superfluous effects. I’ll add those in later. I know many people prefer to emulate sounds early on, and that’s fine too…but I’m sticking to my story. 
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Hi @barny
in this case
x=practice
you don’t need to get held up with fiddling around instead of doing the practice.
My answer is intended to keep you enjoying the practice and I pointed out any detriments to the options. If you feel like hearing something well distorted, go for it.
If you need a strong recommendation, I’d say keep the sound of the amp pretty clean. You want to work on getting your fingers to lay down in time, not missing strings, not missing frets, not buzzing… You can hear this easily when the sound is not too loud, doesn’t have tons of effects, and doesn’t distort so much is covers the buzzing from missing a fret.
You will also be working on knowing the note positions on strings 5 and 6 while you do this.
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After trying out a few combinations, I’ve settled with practicing without distortion like you both advised, but with the strumming hand being intentionally strumming through all the strings. That seems to pick up all the poor muting and noise between changes, etc.
Still, playing with distortion plugins is so addictive. I played Molly’s Lips (just G5 <> C5), tweaking the parameters each run. Before I knew it, an entire hour had passed. Never knew that 2 chords could be so entertaining.
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For power chords, you want to only strum the strings that are part of the chord. So 2 or 3 strings depending on how you are playing the power chord. You do not want to strum all strings. The idea is that you should be getting used to muting the strings adjacent to what you are fretting, and trying not to strum too far above or below those.
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I don’t think this is right, in general. You very often want to strum all the strings, but only have 2 or 3 strings ring out, with the other strings muted. See here at 6:10: https://www.justinguitar.com/guitar-lessons/power-chords-bg-1201. The vigorous strumming of all the strings is key in some songs.
(In other songs, you way want to have controlled strumming of only the fretted strings, of course).
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I definitely notice that when I play power chords I want to avoid adjacent strings:
- I often cannot move fast enough to hit all of them and play in time
- I can hear the muted strings and they do not sound like I want - too noisy
Watch Justin in the intro of that lesson - he is NOT strumming through all the strings when he is using the power chord muted.
Also, listen to Cocaine lesson portion and note that Justin is NOT hitting string 6 for the main riff. If you hit string 6, there is an extra ‘whump’ sound that is not right and doesn’t sound clean.
For some styles, you may want that sound. Justin demonstrates it around 6:24 and again when he mentions Molly’s Lips where the sound is part of the song. I still think it is better to get used to containing the strum while practicing the chord when not in a song rather than needing to re-learn it later after the habit is set to move through all strings.
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Good points. It definitely depends on the song. I feel like when the guitar is distorted (I’m thinking more punk than metal, I guess) you want to strum all the strings (like here: https://www.justinguitar.com/songs/ramones-sheena-is-a-punk-rocker-chords-tabs-guitar-lesson-sg-062).
In any case, I do think you want to learn how to mute all the strings that are not fretted when playing power chords, even if you are targeting just 2 or 3 strings in the strum.
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I’m not sure if it’s just my guitar, but I can hear some note when I mute the 6th string on the lower frets. It is most obvious when strumming the B-flat power chord on the first fret of the 5th string. I don’t mean that I failed to mute it; I mean that the “thud” of the muted 6th string has a bit of note in it and sounds absolutely horrible.
For some reason this doesn’t happen at higher frets.
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yes! very much so. I should say that I want to avoid adjacent strings, but I also know it is unlikely, so ringing is to be muted for sure. You also want to mute because open strings will start to ring sympathetically, especially with the amount of energy we often put into playing loud and fast songs.
The punk stuff makes hitting the muted strings part of the song in a lot of cases. That is not a genre I have concentrated on, so it wasn’t in my thoughts much. Couldn’t even think of the name of the genre until you posted it!
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I have a question.
I understand the purpose of muting with first finger to avoid precision while strumming the chords.
But in the example below, how do you suggest to mute the 6th string? With thumb? Or is there any tip for such chords?. Also strumming 02 and then 022 feels like it’s pretty tricky without being precise. I think in such cases I just can’t full swing strum.
Many thanks
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I would use my thumb on that, but if your hands are too small, then you may need to rely on better precision. I don’t think I could palm mute just string 6 accurately and would be better off just trying to hit string 4, and allowing string 5 misses to be muted. Nothing else looks reasonable to me.
Definitely not a full strum. I don’t see any reason to do full strums unless you want the muted thump on the strings (discussed above).
The 02 → 022 is not too bad when you used to subtle shifts on the strings there to lift up your finger a bit. it is in time with the palm mute so wouldn’t mess up my head too much.
That fret 5->77->5->55->3 stuff would take me some practice.
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If you haven’t already seen it, there is a lesson on thumb muting two modules later (module 14). Might be worth taking a sneak peek ahead.
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