Electric Guitar Chords - Secrets to Playing Rhythm Guitar Revealed

Playing chords on your electric guitar is quite different from an acoustic, especially when using distortion. To get the best sound out of your distorted guitar it is best to substitute standard open electric guitar chords with bar chords, power chords and simple triads. The aim of this article is to discuss the different electric guitar chords that sound really cool with distortion.

The first electric guitar chords you should use with distortion are bar chords. A bar chord gets it name due to the fact that the first finger will lay across the fret board covering all of the strings. To make a simple bar chord first look at how you would play an open E major chord. Now move that same fingering for an E major chord up the neck one fret and use your index finger to bar all the strings on the first fret. The advantage of using bar chords is that you can easily move this same pattern up and down the neck. Bar chords sound great on an electric guitar because you can easily keep any unwanted strings from ringing and causing feedback.

Some more electric guitar chords you may find useful are power chords. Power chords are made up of just two notes. Usually the a root note and a fifth. If you are a fan of Metallica then you will love power chords. Almost all of their earlier songs are played using these electric guitar chords. An example of a power chord would be to play the 6th string 5th fret and the 5th string 7th fret together at the same time. These two notes make up an A5 power chord. This same pattern can be moved anywhere on the neck. Try it you'll see what I mean.

Lastly, you can play triads, or three note electric guitar chords. Triads can be made up of the root, third and fifth, however many guitar players like to omit the fifth and use the seventh chord tone because it generally gives a more unique sound. A good example of a band who utilizes a lot of triads in their electric guitar chords is Opeth.

All three of the electric guitar chords above sound great with heavy or light amounts of distortion. Bar chords help stifle unwanted feed back and noise while power chords and triads are simple chords shapes that have a clean crisp presence. The electric guitar can be a completely different monster than the acoustic so take advantage of the electric guitar chords mentioned above to make up your own brutal riffs.

You can learn more bone crushing electric guitar chords and other rockin' techniques by visiting Jam-o-rama.info