Hello! Justin here. How you doin?

In this lesson now we're going to be checking out

a little bit of more advanced

power chord technique and also introduce

a little thing called "palm muting" 
which is a very very cool

mainly a rock technique

that works on electric guitar

but it also sounds very cool

on acoustic guitar.

You can even use it for your
12-bar blues stuff as well

so it is pretty handy little
cool thing to do.

So the first thing I want to talk about is

you've now got your power chords

with the 6 strings root and you've also got

a power chord with the 5th string root

So a really good exercise is
to practice going through

any or all of your power chords

and playing them on both
the 6th string and the 5th string

so, if you took, say a C power chord

you could have that as the 6th string root

at the 8th fret

♪

or the 5th string root at the 3rd fret

♪

They nearly sound identical

♪

You'd also have, say a G chord

at the 6th string root, 3rd fret

♪

or the 10th fret, 5th string root

♪

And you can hear this one sounds an octave higher

♪

but they're essentially the same chords.

It wouldn't matter if it was written in the music

to play one and you played the other

It wouldn't matter if "that" or "that"

It just sound slightly different

It's up to you to choose

So that's the first thing
that's really important to realize

that every chord, power chord, 
can be played in 2 different places.

It also leads to a little bit of a confusion
as to which one

are you going to choose
if it just says in the music to play C

well, you're going to play
this C, or this C

There's even another one up here.
so which one are you going to choose?

Usually, you're looking for the ones that are
the easiest to get to

Sometimes you might want one
that is further away

deliberately 'cause it's going to sound higher

Or 'cause you want to get a sliding effect
up to it sliding effect up to it

But usually you pick the nearest one

Now, one of the chord progressions

that we looked at in the very first one

when we look at power chords

with the 6th string root

It was the same sequence that went

F, B♭

A♭ to D♭

It's a very very common chord sequence, right?

Now, of course jumping around that much

if you are playing in a rock band

and you're jumping 'round 
and you try to check out

all the hot chicks up the front
and bash your head around

and probably swig a bottle
of Jack Daniels or whatever

you try to do at the same time

then the last thing you ought to be doing

is looking at the guitar 
trying to shift around

and get your fingers moving like that

It's just not happening.
So, what we want to do

is try to simplify that so the movements 
that you have to make

on the neck aren't quite as big.

Now the first chord sequence was F to B♭

Now, that's a big jump already.
That's like a five-fret jump.

We could also go from F to B♭

and stay in the same fret
because F is in the 1st fret

with the 6th string root
and B♭ is in the

1st fret with the 5th string root

so, of course, it's going to be
a bit cooler to go

♪

and the next chord was

A♭

No getting around that

you're going to have to make a jump

But the next chord was D♭

which is also a big five-fret jump

Then we could go A♭

to D♭

because A♭ and D♭

are in the same fret too

So now we'd have

F - B♭ - A♭ - D♭

It's really important this, 
that you get the idea

of trying to look as you're
learning a tune

especially if you're learning like

tabs off the Internet or whatever

where it just gives you the chord

and you've got no further instruction

That you really think about

which chords you might use

and also try and listen

because it takes a little bit of practice

But you can learn to hear

Where a power chord might be played

if it is this one

♪

or this one

♪

They sound different, right?

So if you try one
and you try the other one

you listen to a record of the song
that you're trying to play

you will listen to it and go

"Well, that sounds like the high one"

and you're probably right

Remember, these little inside of head attachments
I don't mean my hat, I mean the ears

Those things are really really good

at helping you play guitar

because they tell the truth

they say "yeah, this one sounds right" or

"that one doesn't sound right"

So, make sure you trust your ears

that's really important

So, have a little fiddle 
about where you play

what power chords

and the thing I want to explain
to you right now

is thing called "Palm Muting", right?

I'm just going to play a G power chord

so "this" would be kind of normal

♪

that's palm muted

Normal

palm muted

and the reason it's called a "Palm Mute"

is because we are using
this part of our hand

the outside of your hand.
The bit that you might do

a karate chop with
if you're karate chopping a–

not that they really do karate chops

but I think you probably know what I mean

It's that little outside bit of your hand

and you're going to rest that
right on the strings

at the back of the guitar.
Just if you look where

the actual bridge is where 
the strings are making contact

with the bridge, the saddles
you're putting it right on there

Just lean it forward
a little bit so you can play

your chord (♪)

and you've got a palm mute effect.

Now what's interesting is
the further back you go

Now we've got no palm mute
'cause we're off the back of the...

the palm is not touching the strings
as you bring it forward

you get more and more muted
until you just get clicky

and it doesn't make any sense
So, any further then, say

two inches away from the bridge
you don't really get a sound

you just get kind of a click
But what you're really after there

is just bringing it forward a bit
that kind of a muddies it up.

If you're playing Metallica or Green Day
or something like that

That would be a really
cool effect to be doing

especially, if you kind of play

some with the palm muting

some without

♪

That kind of thing

It is really worth being able
to play a chord

2 and 3 and 4 and

So the first one

open

then 2 and 3 and 4 and

are all muted

♪

Really a good technique

to get used to with this thing

where you're resting it on the guitar

it does make it sound kind of heavy

especially with a lot of distortion

it gives that rock-metal sound

but it also sounds cool

with the blues

If we think back to our regular

12-bar blues rhythm

♪

we add a little bit of palm mute

♪

sounds pretty cool, I reckon like that

♪

No palm mute

with the palm mute back on

It is definitely something that
you want to check out there

A little bit of palm mute
on your 12-bar blues

always sounds good

♪

so have a little bit of an experiment
with this palm mute

See if you can learn to listen to it

so when you are listening to a track

that you're trying to play
and you've got the tab out

whatever and you're trying to figure it out

or, even better, you're transcribing

a song by yourself, just use your ears

and try and hear "Oh, is he using
any palm mute there, or not?"

and then, as you get used to it

you hear it more and you've played it more

you will start to recognize it
pretty quickly

and be able to use it whenever you like

So, I hope you've enjoyed that

and I'll see you for another lesson

sometime really soon

Take care!

Bye-bye