| | | Hey Friend,
You know I'm always on the lookout for good info I can pass on to you, right?
There's a young guy out of Nashville that has a Youtube channel that I've been watching lately.
His name is Jim Lill, and his focus is primarily Country guitar.
Now I know we're all about Rock over here, but hear me out...
Jim posts a video every Monday where he highlights a technique or a set of chords or what-have-you. He a very solid guitarist and demonstrates everything he talks about, so I like watching his videos about lead techniques, mainly because I can stand to get a lot better and more comfortable there.
This last video he posted has some very cool lead techniques that I thought I'd pass on to you.
Why am I showing you some lead techniques when I'm all about chords?
Well, I want you to see how using the power chord shape can be used as a lead technique.
The technique is called "octaves" for obvious reasons, which I will explain in a moment.
When we finger a normal power chord, we use our index finger for the root and either our ring or pinky finger for the fifth note of the chord. These are typically on adjacent strings.
Now have you noticed that we can fill out a power chord by adding a third string to the fingering? When we do this, we add the octave note to the power chord, effectively doubling (and strengthening) the root note of the chord.
For example, look at the A5 power chord at the fifth fret. Your root note is the A note on the sixth string. Your fifth note E is on the A string (fifth string) at the seventh fret. If you add the note at the seventh fret on the fourth string, you have the A note as well.
Now that you have this fingering in mind, what happens when you only allow the root and octave notes ring out? You have this lead technique!
The key to making this work is to learn how to mute the strings you don't want to hear.
You can mute strings with both hands, but in this instance you want to use the fingers of your fretting hand. To mute strings you simply angle your fingers to keep the surrounding strings from vibrating.
The muted string will sound more like "thunk" instead of the note you're playing.
Back to the A5 power chord. In this case you would either angle your index finger to lightly touch the fifth string or use your middle finger to lightly touch it, effectively muting the E note. Your ring finger would fret the A note on the fourth string, and your pinky/hand is angled to mute the remaining strings.
What you now have when you strum is just the two A notes, and you can use this fingering to slide up and down the fingerboard to create melodic riffs that sound full.
Here's his video showing what I mean (plus three other tips). As you can see, he's playing octaves on the third and fifth strings, so the technique is movable.
It takes a little practice to get the muting down and make sure you're not pressing your fingers down too hard on those muted strings, but once you get it, it's a very usable technique.
Guess what? It's used in ROCK all the time!
Just another friendly tip showing you how power chords can make your playing better. If you haven't checked out Easy Power Chords yet, what's holding you back? You can get the low-down here.
Peace~
Dave
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