Open Voicings; Power Chords for Acoustic Guitar

Brian · Pit Bull Joined: 26 Aug 2003 Posts: 373

Acoustic power chords???!!! Rolling Eyes

Why Yes there are Exclamation

. There's a way to voice chords that is new to me in some charts for acoustic guitar I've been playing lately (at least I hadn't heard of it before, but who am I? Just an old hack rocker/jazzer Cool

). The concept is called open chords. They sound open and "airy" and you can either strum the bajeebers out of them for a strong rhythmic feel, whole note strums for a more serene open feel, or fingerpick them.

It's playing open position chords like E, D, and A but moving them up the neck in their major and minor forms and playing the open strings for that chord shape in the 1st position. Take for example an E chord shape...

The key of E (E major scale) has 4 sharps so you use the sharp note names not flats when referring to notes in that key.

_o______o o
|_|_|_|1|_|_|
|_|2|3|_|_|_| Play an E major 1st finger plays G# (G sharp)
|_|_|_|_|_|_| (Ab, A flat) the major 3rd
|_|_|_|_|_|_|

_o______o o
|_|_|_|_|_|_| slide up 2 frets with 2nd & 3rd fingers (1 whole step)
|_|_|_|1|_|_| note that 1st finger position only moved up 1 fret &
|_|_|_|_|_|_| is playing A natural, the minor 3rd (b3rd) in the F# (Gb)
|_|2|3|_|_|_| scale and play all of the strings. You are playing F#m7sus4

_o______o o
|_|_|_|1|_|_|4th fret
|_|_|_|_|_|_| slide up 2 frets (1 whole step) 1st fingerplays B natural, the
|_|2|3|_|_|_| minor 3rd for the key of G# (Ab), this is G#m+5
|_|_|_|_|_|_| (G sharp minor with augmented 5th)

_o______o o
|_|_|_|1|_|_|5th fret
|_|2|3|_|_|_| slide up 1 fret, (a half step) and play the E maj chord shape
|_|_|_|_|_|_| You are now playing Aadd9
|_|_|_|_|_|_|

What you've done here is play the I, iim, iiim, IV chords. To summarize the whole thing play

I, iim, iiim, IV, V, vim, viim (minor 7th or minor (dominant) 7th, minor b7th, minor flat 7, ), I (octave)

and produce variations of the E, F#m (Gbm), G#m (Abm), A, B, C#m (Dbm), Dm, E chords that can almost always be used for all of these chords whether you use them together with the others or not.

This will work with the A and Am chord shapes playing strings 1-5 and the D & Dm chord shapes playing strings 1-4.

(now Ferrari 1, correct me if my theory is all wet)