Originally Posted by: mattpcollins

Hey guys,

I'm getting towards the end of Guitar Fundamentals 1. I'm on chapter 6, playing in keys. I've been working through these lessons slowly, and practicing Lisa's sings alongs over and over. I've got to be honest, I'm having fun playing these open chords. And for the first time, what I'm playing sounds musical. I love that techinique of hitting the bass note first. I find myself getting creative too, muting strings, playing part of the chord as an arpegio, then changing to another chord smoothly...it's great.

When I first started playing a year and a half ago, I didn't even know what a major or minor chord was. Somehow I discovered the power chord and turned my gain way up, and learned a pentatonic shape.

I took some private lessons and my teacher had me learn the five open chord shapes. But we immediatly got into the barre chords, and he told me not to waste too much time with the open shapes. He knew my end goal was to play hard rock, like Van Halen, Ratt, and Cinderella. Is it that open chords aren't used much in rock music?

Should I continue working through these open chord exercises slowly and master them? Or speed things up and quickly get to barre chords, and of course the Rock lessons.

The way I see it is, if your getting noticible improvement and making something musical, then stick with it.

Having started playing in high school in the early 80's, played in a band in the late 80's and learned much of how to play from a lot of those bands, I can very much say; yes you will need those chords. That teacher was giving you terrible advice. I can name a ton of songs from that era that used many, some all of those 'five basic' chords. I mean, the verse in Ratt-Round & Round has a version of an open G (G5) in the middle for the groovy pedalled riff. Without that G, the riif is not as cool. And for the record, learning any and all of 'Out of the Cellar' is a great way to learn 80's guitar. And, of course, anything George Lynch.

So, bad advice from the instructor.

Yes, you will play a lot of power chords. That is true but if you don't spend time learning all different kinds of chords, and learning songs is a great way to do it, you'll limit your understanding of what make a lot of great songs interesting....and pretty much exclude every AC/DC song too! (Herman was right)

Russell Parrish (ie - 'Satchel') has played with Jeff Pilson, Rob Halford, in Rush and Van Halen Tributes and even in a band post-Racer X with Paul Gilbert often playing bass. The point of that is that Russ is a very well rounded player with a huge variety of skills that you don't always see in Steel Panther.

Never exclude a skill or ignore one. Always add.