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68 Part II: Setting Up to Play the Blues TEAM LinG
grouping of chords for songs in the key of A) in barre form, you wouldn’t use
just the E form or just the A form, because you have to make large leaps up
and down the fretboard.
Instead, use a combination of the E- and A-forms that yield economic
movement — distances of only two frets or so. For example, if you substitute
the E form for the A chord, you wind up at the fifth fret — a good, central
location on the neck. But instead of jumping up to the tenth fret to play the D
chord, use the A-form barre chord, which allows you to play D at the same
fret as the A chord. Then to play the E chord, simply move the A form up two
frets to play the E chord at the seventh fret.
Figure 4-11 shows an exercise with mixed E- and A-forms in the progression
described in the previous paragraph. This task gives you practice in switching
forms as well as moving around the neck.
Figure 4-11:
Combining
A- and E-
form barre
chords in a
progression.
Am Dm C B7
Track 5, 0:21
5th fret 5th fret 3rd fret 7th fret
6th string 5th string 5th string 6th string
Taking Advantage of Versatile
Power Chords
After you master barre chords (see “Going to the Next Level: Barre Chords”
earlier in the chapter), you may want to try power chords. Power chords
aren’t barre chords; they’re two- and three-finger chords that are movable.
The “power” part of the chord makes these chords sound like rock ’n’ roll,
because they’re neither major nor minor, and they use a lot of distortion — a
major staple of the rock sound (for more on distortion, see Chapter 15). But
blues players since Muddy Waters and Chuck Berry have recognized the usefulness
of power chords in blues, too.
The power chord gets its name from rock-guitar vocabulary, because it
sounds better than saying “G no third,” although that’s technically what this
chord is.