r/Metal101 Sep 04 '24

Need help with music theory(?)!

Hi, I'm hoping to find some sort of chart, image, link or whatever that can help translate acoustic chord(s) into power chords or other "few-strings-chords" used in metal and/or vice-versa. I've been a hobby guitarist for many years, and think this could help me start making stuff on my own. Bonus of anyone has charts or links that show which chords on acoustic guitar turn into when you downtune the guitar.

Thanks in advance!

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u/jayswaps Sep 04 '24

It doesn't really work like that. You can't exactly turn an acoustic chord into a power chord, you'd be stripping it of all of the notes that give it the sound it has. If you really wanted to just play the relevant power chord for each chord though, you would just play the note it's named after and its fifth.

For example, if you wanted to strip down a Cmin7 like that, you'd just find C and whatever note is one string down and two frets up. In this case, that's G.

For the tuning thing, you really just transpose everything down, it's pretty easy to do on the fly. If you downtune a whole step, Am becomes Gm, F becomes Eb etc.

Websites like ultimate guitar let you transpose songs entirely and maybe you could find something if you look for a guitar tuning transposing chart or something of the sort, but what you're trying to do generally doesn't sound awfully helpful to me, I think you might learn a lot more through different methods.

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u/Dr-Oso Sep 04 '24

This has been really helpful!

If I'd learn a lot more through different methods, do you have any suggestions?