Power Chords
A power chord is the simplest possible chord StrumAndKey documents: just a root and a perfect 5th (7 semitones up), two notes, no 3rd at all. Leaving out the 3rd is the entire point — the 3rd is the single interval that makes a triad sound major or minor, so a chord built without one is neither. That harmonic ambiguity is exactly what makes power chords survive heavy distortion in a way full triads don't: distortion generates extra overtones (intermodulation products) from every note being amplified nonlinearly, and a full major or minor triad's 3rd interacts with those extra overtones to produce a muddy, dissonant clash. Strip the 3rd out and there's nothing there to clash — which is precisely why power chords, not full triads, became the load-bearing harmonic vocabulary of distorted rock, punk, and metal guitar starting in the 1960s-70s.
Power chords are written with a "5" (as in C5, G5, D5) specifically because they're the interval count, not a major/minor label — there is no such thing as a "minor power chord," because without a 3rd there's nothing to be major or minor about. That's a genuinely different situation from every other chord family on this site, all of which do carry a real quality distinction. See Power Chords Explained for the deeper mechanics of why that specific ambiguity is a feature rather than a missing note.
Power chords are the one quality on this entire site that's guitar-only — piano and ukulele don't get their own power-chord pages, and that's not an oversight. On piano, an open 5th (root + perfect 5th, no 3rd) is a real, playable interval, but it isn't treated as a distinct named "chord type" in piano voicing practice or repertoire the way it is in guitar/rock vocabulary specifically because piano playing doesn't carry the same distortion-driven reason to deliberately omit the 3rd — a piano's overtone structure doesn't clash with a full triad the way an overdriven guitar amp's does. Ukulele power chords are physically awkward for a different reason: reentrant G-C-E-A tuning doesn't lay out root-and-5th shapes as conveniently across the short 4-string neck as standard guitar tuning's mostly-4ths structure does, and the genres that lean hardest on power chords (rock, punk, metal) aren't where ukulele repertoire concentrates anyway.
On guitar, power chords are typically played as two- or three-string shapes (root, 5th, and often an octave doubling of the root) movable freely up and down the low strings — because there's no 3rd to worry about voicing correctly, the exact same two-finger shape works at any fret, on any string pair, which is a genuinely large part of why power chords are often the very first "real" (non-open) chord shape guitar beginners learn after open-position majors and minors.
Palm muting — resting the edge of the picking hand lightly against the strings near the bridge while strumming or picking a power chord — is a technique that developed specifically around this chord family's rhythmic role in punk and metal guitar. Because a power chord has no 3rd to define its harmonic color, muting it doesn't destroy any essential identifying information the way muting a full major or minor chord would blur its quality; it just tightens the attack into a percussive chug, which is why palm-muted power chords are the rhythmic backbone of so much heavy guitar music while palm-muted full triads are comparatively rare.
Drop D and other alternate low tunings exist largely to make power-chord playing physically easier and heavier-sounding: tuning the lowest string down a whole step (E to D) lets a guitarist play a full three-note power chord (root, 5th, octave) across the bottom three strings using a single-finger flat barre instead of the two-finger shape standard tuning requires, while also lowering the chord's fundamental pitch for a heavier low end — a real, mechanical reason drop tunings are so strongly associated with genres built on power chords specifically.
Power chords are often described as "not really chords" by strict theory definitions, since a chord is traditionally defined as three or more notes and a power chord technically has only two distinct pitch classes (root and 5th, even when an octave doubling is added, that's still only two pitch classes, just repeated). StrumAndKey documents power chords on equal footing with every fully-fledged triad and extended chord on the site anyway, because in practical guitar vocabulary and notation (the "C5" symbol, the dedicated diagrams, the specific technique built around them) they function as a genuine, distinct chord type that guitarists learn, name, and use exactly like any other — the strict theoretical definition doesn't change how the instrument's real repertoire treats them.
Power chords historically trace back to guitarists in the 1950s-60s (Link Wray is frequently credited as an early popularizer) discovering that omitting the 3rd produced a cleaner sound through the increasingly overdriven amplifiers of the era, well before "power chord" became standard vocabulary; by the punk and metal explosion of the late 1970s and 1980s, the technique had become so central to the genre's sound that entire songs are sometimes built from power chords and rhythm alone, with almost no other chord vocabulary used at all.
Because a power chord's two-note (or three, with octave) shape is so mechanically simple compared to a full barre chord, it's often the very technique that makes fast rhythm-guitar playing physically possible at tempos where fingering a full six-string barre chord accurately would be impractical — another real, practical reason this family dominates uptempo rock, punk, and metal rhythm guitar parts specifically.
Power chords also solve a genuine intonation problem that full triads expose more easily: because a power chord contains no 3rd, it's less audibly affected by the small tuning imperfections (the guitar's equal-tempered frets are a compromise tuning system to begin with) that can make a full major or minor triad sound very slightly "off" in certain keys or positions. A bare 5th is a naturally consonant interval under equal temperament in a way a major or minor 3rd sometimes isn't quite as cleanly, which is a real acoustic reason power chords sound so solid and dependable across the entire fretboard regardless of position.
Songs built substantially around power chords still have a genuine key and implied harmony even though the chords themselves are quality-neutral — the surrounding melody, bass line, or occasional full chord elsewhere in the arrangement is usually what tells a listener whether a power-chord-driven riff is "really" major or minor underneath, since the power chords alone don't say. This is a real, describable fact about how ambiguous harmony gets resolved by context in actual songwriting, not a loophole or technicality.
Bass guitar frequently doubles a guitarist's power chord root an octave lower in rock and metal arrangements, reinforcing the low end while the guitar's power chords carry the mid-range harmonic weight — a real, common arrangement choice that's part of why power-chord-driven genres so often feature a tight, locked-in relationship between bass and rhythm guitar parts specifically, more so than genres built around fuller, more independently-voiced chords.
Power chords are also unusually forgiving of imprecise pitch bending and vibrato, two expressive techniques rock and metal guitarists apply constantly mid-riff — because there's no 3rd defining the chord's quality, a slight pitch waver or a deliberate bend on one note of a power chord doesn't threaten to turn the chord "wrong" the way the identical bend would on a full triad's 3rd, which is a real, describable reason expressive lead-guitar techniques bleed so naturally into power-chord rhythm playing in these genres specifically.
Guitar pedagogy for absolute beginners frequently sequences power chords directly after the first handful of open major and minor shapes, ahead of full barre chords, precisely because a two-finger power chord shape is mechanically simpler than a six-string barre while still teaching the essential "move one shape to any fret" transposition concept barre chords rely on — a genuine, deliberate stepping stone many method books and teachers use for that reason. A student who's confident with power chords already understands movable shapes conceptually before ever attempting the added finger strength a full barre chord demands, which measurably shortens the learning curve once barre technique itself is introduced a few weeks or months later in a typical beginner curriculum — the conceptual leap has already been made, leaving only the physical hand-strength technique still to build from that point forward — a genuinely smaller remaining gap than tackling both ideas, transposition and barre technique, at once from a standing start with no prior movable-shape experience to lean on for confidence, which is exactly the discouraging jump this sequencing is designed to avoid for a beginner still building basic fretting-hand strength and coordination.
This hub is a straightforward 12-key roster: C5 through B5, one page per root. Related reading: Power Chords Explained for the full theory, Barre Chords Explained for the other movable-shape technique guitar beginners tackle around the same stage, and Guitar Chords for the full guitar roster this family is part of.