Power Chord Chart

Here’s a quick way to learn some of the foundation chords that form backbone of Rock music. See these movable Root/Fifth shapes on neck of your guitar with this handy power chord chart. Move your mouse over it and have fun playing with it or simply use your computer keyboard to explore.

Starting from the top of the interface you select the position of root string. You have a choice of anchoring it on either the A string, or on low E string. This will determine hand position and way the shape sounds. Altering this option change the diagram to indicate where your fingers are meant to sit on neck.

A Guide to the Guitar Power Chord Tool

Below that row of string choices is the selectors for the fret number. These start with open strings and go up to ninth fret, which will cover a practical area of the guitar neck allowing you to experiment with different chord. When you change the fret selection it updates visual representation of that chord in its new location, retaining the relative fingering positions.

And if you’d like to change the voicing of the chord, then there’s an option to choose just the root and fifth notes to make the familiar two note power chord sound. You can create a three-note version by adding the octave, which help fill out the tone with more body. This is useful when you want to create a thicker sound or move towards playing full chords later in your practice routine.

The widget produce an audio sample with distortion added which gives it a grainy feel more like the gruff tone of electric guitar amplifiers. Click on play button and listen to the chord you’ve chosen. There’s also a volume slider on right hand side so you can make the sample quieter if required. You can even blend it in with any other background audio.

There is also lots of keyboard shortcuts to make working with the app a cinch. You can tab through various sets of controls and buttons for quicker interaction, then hit either Space or Enter to fire up whichever control is in focus. This lets you try out various chord formations at speed without ever having to pick up mouse.

You will also see a short explanation of musicality of the power chords in help panel, so just click on that panel and toggle it open to learn more about why they’re a versatile interval when distorted. It states that because the third is missing, the chord is neither minor nor major, which makes it suitable for many different harmonic situations. This panel also give you an instant answer if you happen to be lost with regards to any symbols or dots used.

If you prefer a bigger version of this that takes up more screen space, then use full-screen button to open it out, so you can see the fingering better. You will notice it also displays fretboard diagram in a much larger format. This might be handy if you want to play through on your own instrument or if it’s difficult to spot the numbered strings at a distance.

Slide the shape up and down the neck, varying which frets you select. As you move up or down the neck, you’ll find that the interval between your fingers remains fixed but the root note changes. The other benefit of using power chords is this movable quality that means you can play it in any key and not have to learn new finger patterns.

Listen to what happens to the register when played across the fifth string compared to the sixth. Pick out a chord that you know from a popular song and then change the octave setting and hear the effect it has on the total tonal mass of your chosen chord. This will help you bridge the gap from looking at a chord chart on paper to how these shapes sounds and feel under your fingers in real-time.

You should of experimented!