Wild Gesticulation

[elynnia]

Hiya,

I'm a self-taught guitarist playing basically on chords, but I recently decided to try playing American Idiot by Green Day. Although I'm trying to, I don't seem to get how to play power chords by swinging my arm across the strings like many rock bands these days do.

Any hints/ideas?

elynnia

[Primal]

Um... first, don't try to play like other people. Develop your own style, etc, etc. Other than that, try lightly muting the open strings with your fretting hand.

[Jivin]

I dont think developing your own style is really the issue here, there is nothing wrong with wanting to emulate cool stuff you see to a certain extent. In this particular case I would say it's more that it isn't something you can 'learn' as such, so you'd be better off not trying to think about it too much If you want it to, that sort of thing will just come naturally after you've been playing for longer and your more comfortable in a particular zone...

Just keep doing whatever it is you are doing, it will sort itself out on its own

- Dan

[Primal]

Yea, basically what I meant (but didnt quite say) is not to worry about looking cool like that. Once you have become better at guitar, you will know what to do and how to do it, if that makes any sense.

[x189player]

It's also going to make a huge difference how much amplification you have going. Standing in front of a 500 watt stack, your strings are aching to scream so bad that barely looking at them will give you a power chord. There's a lot of factors like compression and gain that affect the 'touch', not just your technique.

I'd say try cranking your amp as loud as it will go and see what difference that makes. You'll probably find that some pedals will help too, especially at lower levels.

[elynnia]

hey everyone,

thanks for the replies.

As with finding my own style - well, I kinda do have my own style, based on my (quite a lot for being 16 of) experience playing (jazz) keyboard. The problem is, I can't really play outside me style, and I thought I might do some Green Day.

The hardest thing I find, if I just try to play the power chords, I always get either one less string if I'm cautious, or else I run over some of the others too. Especially hard when the power chord uses any 3 middle strings... Since I never properly learned guitar, I'm probably doing something wrong....

thanks,

elynnia

[Mr.Churchyard]

No it's just about practice and learning through experience what movement is right if you want to hit a certain amount of strings...

[elynnia]

ah, thanks.

'nothing comes easy'

elynnia

[haggardguy]

If you play a power chord you can always mute most of the other strings with your hand as you smash the strings. After you've been playing for a while and you have good muscle memory its not hard to know where to hit the strings.