Over the past few days, the rock world celebrated two wildly different anniversaries. Woodstock, a defining event of the hippy era, began on August 15, 1969, and almost exactly 5 years later, punk rock was born when The Ramones had their first public show (on August 16, 1974, at CBGB in New York). In honor of this seminal moment, we’ve posted a video of The Ramones playing their first single, “Blitzkrieg Bop,” which in 2008 was ranked by Rolling Stone as #18 in their list of 100 best guitar songs of all time.
This and many other punk songs rely heavily on power chords, played with rapid downstrokes. Learning this chord structure and strumming pattern from our Technique Library will enable you to play hundreds of punk, power pop, and hard rock songs, so you’ll definitely want these techniques under your (studded) belt!
Hey ho, let’s go!
