Power chords: the shape, the chart, the sound

A power chord is two notes and one hand position, and it is the most efficient thing a beginner can learn. Two fingers, no barre, no open string to avoid, and the same shape slides along the neck to give you every chord there is. That combination is why so much rock, punk and metal is built out of them. This page gives you the shape on the sixth string and the shape on the fifth, written string by string and finger by finger, a chart of the fret for every power chord by letter, the right hand work that is actually half the sound, and the one tuning that turns the whole thing into a single finger.

What a power chord is (root and fifth)

An ordinary chord has three notes: a root, a third and a fifth. The third is the one that carries the mood. Leave that third where the major scale puts it and the chord is major and sounds bright. Lower the third by a half step and the chord is minor and sounds dark. It is a single note and it does all that work.

A power chord takes it out. What is left is the root and the fifth, and very often the root again an octave higher to give the shape some body. So E5 is E and B, with another E on top. A5 is A and E. G5 is G and D. The number five in the name is the interval that remains, not a fret and not a count of fingers.

Removing the third does two things. It makes the chord neutral, neither major nor minor, so one shape can stand in for both and you never have to decide which the song wants. And it makes the chord survive distortion. A distorted signal multiplies the clashes between notes, and a full chord played through heavy gain turns into a wash. A root and a fifth are the most consonant pair there is after the octave, so they stay clear no matter how much dirt you put on them. That is the real reason rock is written this way.

Two notes or three

Both are correct and they are the same chord. The two note version is the minimum: root and fifth, nothing else. Adding the octave on the next string makes it thicker without changing its name, because the note you added was already in the chord.

Each position on this page is written as six characters, read from the thickest string to the thinnest. A number is the fret to press. A 0 is an open string. An x is a string you do not play, and on a power chord there are always three or four of those, which makes the right hand matter as much as the left.

The shape on the sixth string

The root sits on the thickest string, and the note under your first finger is the name of the chord. This is the deepest and most common of the two shapes.

The open one, and the three that follow it

At the open position the sixth string is already an E, so E5 needs no first finger at all: 0 2 2 x x x. One fret up is F5, 1 3 3 x x x. Three frets up is G5, 3 5 5 x x x. Five frets up is A5, 5 7 7 x x x. That is four chords and one hand position, and it is already enough for a great deal of music.

Notice that this is the same root string a barre chord uses. A power chord on the sixth string and an E shape barre at the same fret have the same name, because the note under the first finger is the same note. If you can find your power chords, you already know where your barre chords live: see the barre chords guide.

The shape on the fifth string

The same shape, moved across one string. The root is now on the fifth string, which is an A when open, so the frets come out at different numbers for the same chord names.

And one on the fourth string, with a catch

You can root a power chord on the fourth string too, and it is useful for brighter riffs, but the shape is not the same. The octave sits three frets up instead of two: x x 0 2 3 x is D5. The reason is the tuning itself. Every pair of strings on a guitar is a fourth apart except the third and the second, which are a major third apart, and that one irregularity shifts the shape by a fret. It is the same reason tuning by ear uses the fourth fret on the third string and the fifth fret everywhere else: the online guitar tuner does it for you.

Two fuller voicings, with strings left ringing

A power chord does not have to stop at three strings. Two shapes are worth keeping, and both earn their place on an acoustic, where there is no distortion to supply the weight.

Note what both have in common: nothing new is added, only notes the chord already contains, higher up. That is the whole trick, and it is why neither one turns into a major or a minor chord. The third string stays out of the G5 shape, so mute it or skip it.

Power chord chart by note

Find the chord in the first column and the chart gives you the fret and the whole position, on each of the two root strings. Both are right and they sound different: the sixth string version is lower and heavier, the fifth string version is brighter and sits better above a bass player.

The chart is calculated from the chromatic scale rather than copied from anywhere, and the method is worth more than the table, because it makes the table unnecessary. The fret is just the distance in half steps from the open string to the note you want. The sixth string is an E: one fret up is F, three is G, five is A. The fifth string is an A: two frets up is B, three is C, five is D. Learn the notes on those two strings and you can name any power chord anywhere without looking anything up. The guitar fretboard notes tool is built for exactly that.

One warning about the chart. The shape moves, your left hand does not have to relearn anything, and so it is tempting to treat changing chords as free. It is not. The real skill with power chords is moving the whole hand accurately without stopping the strumming, and that takes the same patient practice as any chord change. Play three of them in a loop, one per beat, slowly enough that nothing stops, and only raise the tempo when four laps come out clean.

Palm muting and the right hand

Half of the power chord sound happens behind the bridge, not on the neck. A power chord leaves three or four strings untouched, and with distortion an untouched string that rings is immediately audible. So the right hand has two jobs: hitting the strings you want, and silencing the ones you do not.

Muting what you are not playing

• The thin strings. Let the soft underside of your first finger, the part that is not pressing anything, lie lightly across them. They go dead, and you can then strum wide without aiming carefully, which is a large gain at speed.
• The thick string above the root. On a fifth string shape, the sixth string is the dangerous one. The tip of the first finger leans back and rests against it, just enough to stop it vibrating.
• The gap between chords. Release the pressure of the left hand without lifting the fingers off the strings. The shape stays in place and stops sounding. The silence between hits is part of the riff, not an absence of one.

The palm mute itself

Rest the edge of your picking hand palm on the strings, right up against the bridge, and keep it there while you pick. The note still sounds, but short, thick and percussive: this is the chug that drives most heavy riffs. How far forward you place the palm controls how much of the note survives. Right on the bridge, almost all of it. Move an inch toward the neck and the pitch disappears and only the thud is left. That whole range is available and it is played with one small movement of the arm.

Alternating muted hits with open ringing chords is the basic rhythmic language of the style, and it is worth practicing as a rhythm rather than as a technique: two bars muted, two bars open, over one chord, before you add any chord changes at all.

Use downstrokes to start with. A power chord played with a firm downstroke has an attack that an up and down motion softens, and in rock that attack is the point. Up strokes arrive later, when the tempo makes them necessary.

Drop D: power chords with one finger

Lower the sixth string from E to D, leave everything else alone, and the three thickest strings become D, A, D. Those three notes are already a power chord, which means the shape collapses into one finger laid flat across the three strings at the same fret.

Open, with nothing pressed at all, that gives you D5: 0 0 0 x x x, three strings at the nut. Lay one finger across the third fret and you have F5. Across the fifth fret, G5. One finger, any fret, and the note on the sixth string names the chord exactly as before.

That is why so many heavy riffs are written in this tuning. The hand is free, the movement is instant, and the lowest note of the guitar drops a whole step, which is a real change in weight. The cost is small and worth knowing: the other five strings are untouched, so everything you know still works above the sixth string, but any shape that used the sixth string is now two frets out. Your open E major and your E shape barres need rethinking, and nothing else does.

Our Drop D tuner opens on that tuning, so you can get there in under a minute and back just as fast.

Where power chords fit, and where they do not

They fit anywhere the song wants weight and does not need the chord to declare itself major or minor. A loud chorus, a riff, a verse under a vocal that is carrying the melody on its own. Because a power chord says less, it leaves room, and in a full arrangement that room is valuable.

They do not fit where the third is doing the work. A bare fingerpicked verse played in power chords sounds hollow rather than strong, because nothing else is supplying the mood the third was carrying. In that situation the open chords are the right answer: the basic guitar chords cover them one by one, and the printable guitar chord chart draws them.

There is one place where the choice is genuinely useful to know. The chord that stops most beginners is F, and F5 is one of the easiest power chords there is. In a rock arrangement it is a complete answer. In a folk arrangement it is not, and the F chord on guitar lays out every other way of playing that chord, from three fingers to the full barre.

Power chord songs

Here is where the shapes go. Seven songs built on power chords, with the chords each one runs on. Nothing but chord names: no tab, no lyrics. Find the frets in the chart above, play them in order, and you will hear which song it is.

The last three are the gentler way in: two or three chords, and tempos that leave your hand time to arrive. The first four are the famous ones, and two of them are harder than they sound for a reason that has nothing to do with the left hand. Smells Like Teen Spirit runs on F5, Bb5, Ab5 and Db5, four shapes with no open string anywhere near them, and the whole riff depends on silencing the strings you are not playing. That is the right hand work from the section above, not a harder chord.

One useful exercise, and it is the one worth more than the song list. Play E5, then G5, then A5, one chord per beat, in downstrokes, at a tempo slow enough that the pulse never stops. Four laps with no stray string and no gap is the pass mark. Only then raise the tempo, and only then add the palm mute, on the first two beats with the chord left open on the last two. Five minutes a day on that loop beats half an hour of approximate riffs.

If none of the seven is the song you want, our list of easy guitar songs for beginners is sorted by what each one really asks of you, and several of them run on power chords alone.

Who made this

Guitar Social Club is the work of Yohann Abbou, a guitar teacher in Paris. He teaches adults, which shapes everything here: people with jobs, limited practice time and a clear idea of the songs they want to play. The order on this page is the one he uses in lessons, which is why the right hand gets as much space as the left: a power chord with a ringing open string next to it is not a power chord that needs more practice, it is a muting problem. The rest of our free guitar tools work the same way. More about who writes these pages and how they are checked is on our about page.