Capos. We’ve all used them, or at least, seen them. How many of you just stick a capo on because a chord sheet, or maybe I, tell you to? And what’s going on anyway?
Well basically if you put a capo on a guitar or ukulele you’re raising the pitch of the instrument, and a lot of us do that purely to get the song into a more comfortable key to sing in. This song’s a bit low, pop a capo on, that’s better! But that’s your absolute basic use, and with a small amount of theory and a bit of practice you can get so much more.
Capos come in many shapes and sizes. Personally I use a Shubb capo for my guitar, and I don't use one for the ukulele. Getting the best one for your instrument is unfortunately purely trial and error. Like underwear, it needs to fit neither too loosely, or too tightly ;-)
Shapes Vs Sounds.
The first thing to understand is that your favourite chord shape might not be exactly what you think it is. When you first learn a chord, let’s say ‘A’ - that chord is a pattern of fingers in a particular place which makes a particular sound. For open chords, that sound is a mixture of fretted notes and open strings. What people don’t immediately realise though is if you take that whole pattern, open strings and all, and move it up the fretboard, you’re using the same shape to create a different chord sound.
For guitarists this is most easily seen between the chords of ‘E’ and ‘F’ - where ‘F’ is basically all the notes you’ve fretted to play an ‘E’ one fret higher, and then a barre finger is used on the first fret, taking the place of the nut of the guitar. You’ve basically shortened the length of the fretboard with your barre finger, and then put that ‘E’ shape in front of it. That ‘E’ shape now has the sound of ‘F’. For ukulele players, it might be most easily seen with 'A' and 'B'.
But I can’t play barre chords….
If you replace that barre finger with a capo, and play an ‘E’ shape you get an ‘F’. The capo acts like a fixed finger. You might think this isn’t much help, but let’s think about the order of notes and chords for a minute.
If you look at the third column of this chart, you can see putting the capo on the first fret turns an ‘E’ into an ‘F’. On the second, to an ‘F#’ the third ‘G’ the fourth ‘G#’ etc.
But having the capo on one also turns a ‘C’ into a ‘C#’ (or Db), a ‘D’ into a ‘D#’ (or Eb), an ‘A’ into an ‘A#’ (or Bb). Remember all chords that have a sharp designation (#) can also be described by an equivalent flat (b). 'A#' is one fret higher than 'A', but it's also one fret flatter or lower than 'B', so we can generally call that note or chord either 'A#' or 'Bb' - to all intents and purposes they're the same thing.
So a capo allows ordinary open chords to make new chord sounds.
As a beginner guitarist have you ever looked up the chords for a song, and decided you couldn’t play it because the chords were ‘F’, ‘Bb’ and ‘C7’? With a capo on one, that’s the open chord shapes of ‘E’, ‘A’ and ‘B7’. Wanted to play a rock and roll or blues tune in ‘C’ but got put off because of the ‘F’? No problem. If you put your capo on the third fret, that ‘C’ ‘F’ and ‘G’ can be achieved by playing the open chord shapes of ‘A’ ‘D’ and ‘E’.
Ukulele players : you might not suffer from quite the same problems, but the theory and the practice behind this idea is exactly the same!
So we can use a capo to not only get a song into a better key to sing, we can use it to cheat our way into playing songs in difficult keys or to bypass difficult chords altogether.
This might sound like some kind of miracle solution, but it doesn’t work all the time. The more complex the song is, the less likely it is that a capo will offer the perfect answer. But it is a tool to give you playing options you might not have known existed. Study the diagram closely and try and get into it.
I don’t talk about theory for the sake of it. Every bit of theory I know has a real world, practical application for the everyday player. This is useful stuff everybody should try to get to grips with. Once you understand this, you’ll be ready for the next level of capo trickery, coming soon!
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