Power Chords and Bar Chords Explained

It sounds quite cool to say you can play power chords and bar chords on your guitar, but I played bar chords for years without realizing that I was actually playing power chords. Here's the simple difference.

A bar chord is when you take a regular chord, for example E major, and you use your index finger and move that shape further up the neck of the guitar to make another chord. So, E major can be expressed as 0-2-2-1-0-0 and an A major bar chord would be expressed as 5-7-7-6-5-5 and you would play across all six strings and get sound of the full chord.

A power chord is played in exactly the same way with the bar across the strings etc, but you only play the 6th, 5th and arguably 4th strings, which are the 3 thickest strings on your guitar. This may give you the impression that it will actually sound weaker than a bar chord because you are playing less strings and you would be correct, but there is one secret ingredient ro add:

Overdrive

This gives a distorted sound to the chord and when you play a power chord on an electric guitar with overdrive through your guitar amplifier, there is no better demonstration as to why a power chord gets its name.

There is only ever going to be one winner when it comes to power and bar chords, but you may be surprised to learn that a power chord is actually easier to play too.