What is this chord form?

[Gerbilkit]

I have only a basic grasp of music theory and chord construction, although I am trying to learn more. So bear with me in my ignorance. I know that pretty much all chords come from the basic open forms and then the barre forms up and down the neck with inversions and suchlike. But where does this form come from?

|------------|
|------------|
|------4-----|
|------4-----|
|---2--------|
|------------|

I believe at this position it is some form of B chord which is how I play it in songs. I use this form all the time. Moving it up and down makes a very nice E-C#m-B progression with an easy switch to A. But I honestly don't know where this originates from.

I'd also like to know if there are more sweet open forms like this I am unaware of because I love playing progressions in this form.

[Hotspur]

You should always approach a problem like this by looking at what the notes are. IN this case, your notes are B, F#, and B - which is to say that this is a B5 chord, or a "B power chord" if you will.

There's no third so this is neither major nor minor - this means that it will work with a lot of different positions of the same shape on the neck. As you move it up and down the neck it will become the power chord of whatever the root note is.

[walternewton]

If you want to relate it to an open chord you can think of it as coming from the open A (moved up 2 frets, and only playing the three indicated strings of course).

You will get the same interval relationship (root-5th-root) from these shapes:

244xxx

x244xx

xx245x

xxx255

[mr. beaumont]

As far as where it comes from (your actual question) you could definitely see it as the lowest three notes in an "A" shape barre chord...

Power chords themselves are neither major or minor, but they're usually standing in for a major or minor chord...so the "full sized" chords this could be based off of are B major: x 2 4 4 4 x or B minor x 2 4 4 3 x

and yes, you can include the F# on top of either of those...