(During the video I refer to the song “Hotel California”, please go here to view it)
I field a lot of questions about capos. Most of the time people are wondering what chords they are actually playing when using the capo, but there also seems to be a lot of general confusion about them. The above video and this lesson are intended to answer some common questions I get and dispel a few bizarre ideas that I’ve come across.
First off: what’s a capo? Well, basically it’s just a little clamp that holds down all the strings of your guitar at once. I recommend the Shubb brand capos. As far as I’m concerned, they are the best capos money can buy. I DO NOT recommend the spring type capos, like the popular Keyser and Dunlop models. The problem with those type of capos is that they rarely apply the proper amount of pressure to the strings, often pulling them sharp and out of tune (or simply not pressing them firmly against the frets in the first place). Many people prefer them because they are quicker and easier, but none of that really matters if everything you’re playing is out of tune. Besides, it only takes a few seconds to properly adjust a Shubb capo. It’s not a big deal. The Shubb will also last forever.
So what are they for? Capos allow you to utilize open strings in keys that you normally couldn’t. There are lots of great ways to use open strings on the guitar, from unique chord voicings, to pedal tones, to nifty licks. People primarily use capos to facilitate the usage of common open chord voicings (like the CAGED chords) in other keys.
In the video, I play the song “Hey Joe”, which uses all the basic CAGED shapes. Now let’s imagine that a singer walked in while you were playing that and asked to sing along, but he was having trouble singing it in that key. Perhaps if you moved everything up a little bit he would have less trouble. Well, capos make that sort of thing super easy! You stick the capo on there and now it’s in a new key.
But what key is it in now? How do you figure out what chords you’re actually playing? That’s pretty easy too. First off, putting the capo on a particular fret DOES NOT automatically put you in a certain key. The very idea of such a thing is utterly ridiculous. If that were true, then playing without the capo would mean you were always in E, or A, or some other arbitrary key, and that’s obviously not true.
All you need to do to figure out the new chords and what key you are in is count up the same number of half-steps as the fret you put the capo on. So if you put the capo on the 3rd fret, you would change the letter name of each chord by 3 half steps. For example, if the original chord was E, and you put a capo on the 3rd fret, it is now a G chord, as G is 3 half steps above E. If the original song was in A, it’s now in C.
(If you don’t know what a half step is, check out my lessons on intervals or chord construction)
A lot of people get confused here, and it’s mainly because they think about chords in a very backwards way. A chord doesn’t get its name from the fingering. A chord gets its name from the notes you are playing. So if you play a C chord like this: X-3-5-5-5-3 then move it up a few frets, it’s no longer a C chord, as you are playing different notes. Likewise, if you changed the tuning and still played that chord in the original place, it’s not a C chord.
That doesn’t mean that you can’t refer to those shapes as “the A minor shape” or “a D major shape”. Pretty much every guitarist on the planet knows those shapes and chords and will know exactly what you’re talking about. Just don’t make the mistake of thinking that the shape itself IS that chord.
Another thing that people often get confused about is how chords are labelled on charts for songs where the original performer used a capo. These charts are basically written in the key the song would be in WITHOUT the capo. Let’s say I wrote a song using the chords F C Am and Gm, but I played it with a capo on the 5th fret using the C G Em and Dm shapes. When I went to write a chart later, I would simply list the chords as C G Em and Dm, with a note that the player should have a capo on the 5th fret. The reason it’s done this way is mainly to get people playing the right thing sooner. If I were to tell somebody “Yeah, you need a capo on the 5th fret, then the chords are F C Am and Gm”, it might take them a minute or so to figure out how to play those chords with the capo on there. If I simply told them “Put a capo on the 5th fret then use the C G Em and Dm shapes” they would immediately know exactly what to do. Even really experienced and seasoned guitarists would respond to the second way faster.
It’s somewhat similar to the practice of transposition, which they do for instruments like the trumpet or the saxophone. It’s all intended to give the performer less to think about, allowing them to focus on the music and their performance. If one person is playing with a capo and the other person isn’t, that doesn’t mean they are playing different chords or in different keys. They are just playing those chords in different ways.