Two Simple Beginner Guitar Chords To Learn:
Power Chords and Open Chords

When it comes to playing the guitar, some guitar chords will be easier to learn to play than others. The purpose of this article is to share what those beginner guitar chords are and the easiest way is to play them.

At some point you may have heard someone else mention open chords, bar chords and power chords.

These are just names for several different methods you can use to perform chords when it comes to playing the guitar.

Bar chords are more of an intermediate level chord to play so I won’t be discussing them here.

The easiest beginner guitar chords are definitely the open chords and the power chords but they are used in different ways.

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An open chord is what I would describe as a full sounding chord, when you strum it you will hear a whole range of notes and sounds great when strummed on an acoustic or classical guitar.  It is played down the end of the guitar’s fretboard towards the headstock end and you will very seldom moved past the 3rd or 4th when fretting them.

The power chord on the other hand is used more commonly in rock and metal styles of guitar playing and sounds best played on electric guitar with a distortion setting on the amp. A power chord is made up of only two notes as compared to open chords which can be made up of up to six notes. Because a power chord only has two notes, it sounds simple and powerful on electric guitar whereas anymore notes would sound ‘mushy’ through the distortion setting.

Beginner Guitar Chords: The Power Chord

To play a power chord, you are focusing on only playing two notes across two strings. Place your index finger onto the fifth fret of the lower, fat E string and then place your third finger onto the seventh fret of the A string. Your fingers have now formed the power chord ’shape’ which is as follows:  your third finger is always two frets higher and on the neighboring string relative to your index finger.

In this particular case, you have just fretted an ‘A’ power chord also written in music as ‘A5′. It’s an A power chord because your index finger is fretting an A note. If you shift this ’shape’ toward the headstock so your index finger is now on the third fret of the lower, fat E string and your third finger is on the fifth fret on the A string, you are now fretting a G power chord also known as G5.

Go ahead and focus on just strumming the lower sounding two string on the guitar (E and A string) and try not to let any other guitar strings make a sound. Try moving the power chord shape into another position on the guitar neck and strum again.

Congratulations, you’ve just learnt the basics of our first set of beginner guitar chords, the power chord.

To read on about our beginner guitar chords article, see Beginner Guitar Cords (page 2).

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