Using The Capo To Your Advantage

Another tool, tip, trick, or whatever you want to call it, that I have used extensively is the use of the capo. A capo is a clamp-like device that goes on across any fret on the guitar essentially creating a “barre” and can usually be found at any music instrument store. It’s a tool used by many guitarists that enables them to easily change the pitch of open strings making them sound one half step higher, therefore making key changes much easier. I won’t go into much detail on the basics of understanding notes on the guitar because hopefully you already have a general idea. The scope of this article is to give you an example of how and when you can use a capo to your advantage.

The capo can be used to play in a key that you normally would have trouble playing in and forming the chord shapes or it can let you play in a different key without having to learn and memorize the new chord shapes for the particular song you are playing. For example, lets say you want to play a song that’s in a 12 bar blues pattern (I-IV-V) in the key of C using just major chords but you have trouble forming some of those chords cleanly in the key of C, as is the case with me (The full C and full F chord in the first position have always given me trouble probably because I do not have the largest hands). You can keep practicing until you finally get it down, if you haven’t already gotten frustrated and given up on trying or worse yet given up guitar completely by then because it was too hard and not fun, as I have seen happen many times. Or you can just use a capo at the 3rd fret in this example and play using the chord shapes in the key of A, which to me is much easier. So the chord shapes you are playing are A, D, and E but the sound that is being produced is actually C, F, and G. Voila! Easy isn’t it? Slide the capo down to the 5th fret using this same example and you are now in the key of D with the D, G and A sounds being produced, as you can see in the chart below.

Sure, there is a slight tonal difference when using a capo but nothing major and it works. You might even come across some “high and all mighty” guitarists that think it’s cheating, or tell you to use barre chords instead, or even put you down for using it and say you aren’t a true guitarist. OK…..tell that to Johnny Cash or Mike Ness of Social Distortion. Pretty much all their songs are capoed and they did and are doing just fine in their careers as musicians. To each his own and do what feels best for you and what makes your playing more enjoyable. Study the chart below and see if it can make a song easier for you to play.

*For the sake of simplicity I just charted the first 5 frets, but you should get the idea*