Stop playing power chords

The sooner you stop doing this, the better of a guitar player you will become.

In this week's podcast, I talk about what I call the "Freddy King Chord." This is a chord many guitar players would consider weird...

...but only to those who are totally stuck on playing power chords and nothing else.

I go into this at length in the podcast, but basically put, power chords suck. They really do. If all you do is play nothing but fifth chords and solos, you will never advance as a guitar player.

The very first chord most people learn when starting guitar is, of course, power chord E. As in low-E open string and a fretted B on the 5 string using one finger.

Power chords are really easy to play. However, what a ton of guitar players do is play power chords and solos - absolutely nothing else - and then get into a rut and wonder why. It should be no wonder. If anything beyond a power chord fifth is completely skipped, you are musically limiting yourself big time and that's why you get into a rut.

And don't think for a second this is just limited to metal players, because it's not. Blues players also suffer from this too.

Again, I discuss this at length in the podcast and tell you what you can do about it.

Oh, and the reason for showing the Epiphone ES-335 at top? Freddy King played a similar Cherry ES-335 himself. Great guitar.

Published 2020 Jun 25