How Guitars Work

In part b of this lesson on fifth intervals, I'm going to tell you about power chords. You may already be familiar with this as it’s an extremely popular technique in western pop and rock songs.  A power chord is simply the one note, a fifth interval note, and (optionally) an octave note played together.  There is no major third interval note to make the chord either major or minor.  Playing power chords is really common, in western pop and rock music. Let’s look a well known example: Eye of the Tiger, by Survivor: Play the intro to Eye of the Tiger We’re going to start by picking out the bass notes. Starting on the fifth string, find the C note and the B note. And I want you to play:  C, C, A#, C. C, A#, C I want you to do that by yourself, using the knowledge you already have from these lessons (a demo video will be posted here in October 2023 so please check back then for an update if you need to).  Find those notes on the fifth string of your guitar: C, C, A#, C C, A#, C When

In the previous lesson, we’ve looked at playing the root note (or tonic) along with a third interval harmony.  This next lesson will  be in two parts and we’ll look at adding the fifth interval note to build a full major chord. Remember, that’s how all chords are built, based on the first (or root note), major third interval note, and perfect fifth interval note of a scale. In part a of this lesson, I’ll teach you how to find fifth interval notes in relation to your root notes. In part b of, you’ll have a go at playing fifth intervals by using power chords. Building a C chord with a third and fifth interval note Let’s start part one of our lesson on fifth interval notes by looking at the C chord. To build a C chord, we take the first, third and perfect fifth interval notes from the C scale. So we spell the C chord as C, E, and G. C - Tonic (or root note) C# - Flat 2nd  D - Second D# Flat 3rd E - 3rd F Perfect 4th F# - Flat 5th G - Perfect 5th G# - Flat 6th A - 6th A# - Flat 7th B - 7th