Resident sound designer Christian Laffitte infuses high energy into Strum GS-2 with his new sound pack, Power Chords—featuring 13 styles, 92 guitar presets, and 93 strumming patterns playable with your own chord progressions. From Classic Rock to Metal to Industrial, Power Chords fits a variety of production flavors supercharged with attitude. Ranging from sparkly clean sounds all the way up to high-gain territory, Power Chords gives you plenty of chugging action to rock out on your next endeavor.

• Free Vst Power Chord Progressions
• Free Vst Power Chord Changer
• Free Vst Power Chord Progression

Step 3: The Chord Tool What we are going to do is put the whole chord progression into a single FL Studio pattern since the progression won't change later. Click on the arrow button in the top left corner of the piano roll window and scroll down until you get to the chord drop down menu. A bank of power chords designed to be used together in an SF2 file or a Layer channel in FL Studio. All samples have been normalized. Recorded using a Jackson Warrior guitar plugged into a Line6 POD XT Live. File names are based on the notes on the 'E' String (drop D tuning) and numbers represent the octave as it would be identified on a piano. Power Chords was created with the Strum GS-2 acoustic and electric guitars. You can obviously play and edit the sounds in Strum GS-2, but you can also access and play them via the free AAS Player included with your Power Chords.

Who’s Christian Laffitte?

Christian Laffitte is a French musician and sound designer based in south of France. He has been developing sounds for Dream, Arturia, Zoom, Applied Acoustics Systems, M-Audio, Avid to name a few. He also composed music for Sony video games trailers and music for french TV channels and radio stations. As a keyboard player with a great interest in synthesis and new technologies, Christian Laffitte has put all his passion of music and sounds in creating Wejaam: a free music sequencer for smartphones and tablets

Power chords consist of the tonic (i.e. the root of the chord) and the fifth note in the scale, which makes it to a two-note chord. Therefore, the power chords are named with a five, such as C5 and D5. The power chords are frequently used in music styles like rock, heavy metal and punk rock. Yet simple to play, they deliver a full and intensive sound. And the best result is given when you're plugged in with an electric guitar to an amplifier with distortion. Free omnisphere vst plugin. Also, using palm muting will bring a cool sound.

5th chords

Power chord shapes

As you can see in the shapes diagrams below, the power chords can be played with two or three fingers (shape 2 can also be played by two fingers if the ring finger bar two strings). Only two notes are involved in both cases, but in the second shape you play the tonic note twice, in different octaves.

Symbols

= Index finger
= middle finger
= ring finger
= little finger
= don't strum

Shape 1 includes the root and the fifth while shape 2 uses the root note twice, the second time one octave higher. There is no right or wrong in this case, it is up to your own taste and what sounds best in a specific arrangement.

As with barre chords, the power chords are movable. You can use the same shapes as showed above all over the fretboard. The only exception is playing a power chord including the fifth string (B-string):

The next tab picture shows you where to find each power chord on the right fret and root strings according to the notes of the guitar.

With the help from the diagrams and the tab we looked at you should be able to play power chords with any root note you wish. See also the fretboard overview for more details.

Examples of common 5th chords

See more diagrams in power chords chart.

Power chord progressions

It is relatively easy to come up with progressions once you have learned the shapes. Just to give a few examples:
G5 - D5 - E5 - C5
G5 - C5 - B5 - D5
D5 - F5 - G5 - A5
A5 - C5 - G5 - F5
B5 - F#5 - G#5 - D#5 - E5 - B5 - F#5
A famous guitar riff that you could play solely with power chords is the intro to 'Smoke on the Water':
A5 - C5 - D5 - A5 - C5 - Eb5 - D5 - A5 - C5 - D5 - C5 - A5

Power chords – major or minor?

It is neither major or minor when we are playing power chords. It may sound strange, but it depends on that there is no third, only root and fifth.
It is actually a great thing is that you don't need to consider major/minor. When you are looking for progressions with more different chords it will for the most times sound good transforming minor chords to power chords as well and play the typical progression you may be used to play with open chords and treat both major and minor neutrally. C - Am - Dm - G can for example be played as C5 - A5 - D5 - G5. More examples:
A5 - E5 - C5 - D5
Eb5 - C5 - G5
G5 - E5 - C5 - D5
A shape sometimes used together with power chords is this one. Some refer the chord below as a 'minor power chord', but it is actually a major.
This shape is part of barre chordand could be useful in a situation there you want some kind of 'major sound' between the power chords. If you want a minor sound that goes well with an electric guitar with overdrive, you can sometimes solve if depending on the circumstances. For example, Em could be played as 0200xx instead of 022000.

Inverted 5th chords

Sometimes it can be effective to invert the order of tones by making the fifth to the bass note. This is common with chords played at the two middle strings and are related with so-called double stops.

Slash 5th chords

Power chord could be played with an alternative bass note not belonging to the original chord.

These shapes are not including the root, instead it is only implied.
Suggestion of progressions:
E5 - E5/D# - C#5 - B5 - A5
E5 - E5/D# - C#5 - A5 - A5/G# - F#5
G5 - C5/B - C5 - D5/C# - D5
B5 - B5/A# - G#5 - F#5
A5 - F5 - F5/E - F5 - G5 (Dio - 'Rainbow in the Dark')
Notice that it may sound better if the second octave tone is omitted (in other words: the 'Shape 1' is preferred over the 'Shape 2' illustrated above), when using an alternative bass note like this. But to be theoretical correct X25XXX should be seen as a C5/B voicing with an implied C root or rather an inverted G5 whereas X255XX is correctly called C5/B. X25XXX is still named C5/B here because it better fits the context.
More power chords with alternative bass note:
D5/F# (G5/F#) : 25XXXX
In a progression: E5 - D5/F# - G5
E5/G# (A5/G#): 47XXXX
In a progression: B5 - E5/G# - A5
E as a pedal tone: E5: 079XXX, D5/E: 057XXX, C5/E: 035XXX
In a progression: E5 - D5/E - C5/E
Another method for slash power chords is to include four notes. When, for example, F5/C could be played as 88 10 10 XX.

'Augmented power chords'

Augmented power chords aren’t a formal name, but tells what it's all about. An idea to variate the sound and create suspension is to combine a regular power chord with 5th chord with a raised fifth.

The name may seem illogical, but it's consistent.
The idea is to play D5 - D5(#5) or E5 - E5(#5) in a sequence.

Power chords with open strings

Besides the presented shapes above, power chords can be played in other ways, with non-movable shapes that include open strings. Some examples:

Free Vst Power Chord Progressions

G5: 3X0033
G5/D: XX0033
A5: X055XX
B5: X2440X
C5: X350XX
E5: X79900 / 079900

Chords like these can also be used in other styles, including fingerpicking arrangements.

Power chords with muted strings

Another way to play power chords with an alternative bass note is with a muted string in-between:

C5/G: 3X55XX
D5/A: 5X77XX
E5/B: 7X99XX

An alternate chord shape

Free Vst Power Chord Changer

A musician often strives for some kind of variation. For open chords you can alternate with sus chords, but this is not the case for the fifth chord. But there is a kind of 'sus-chord' that you can use in this context also:
You play this chord shape by holding your index finger over the two lowest strings and release the finger from the second string. When you could alter between a power chord and this alternative (what happen in theory is that we change from tonic, fifth, octave to tonic, fourth, octave).

Free Vst Power Chord Progression

See also Punk chords.