Hi this is Simon Candy from Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online.net and today I'm going to show you how to use a capo on the guitar. Now dare I say unlike the uneducated view of a few people out there, using a capo is not cheating. Far from it. It is a stylistic tool that will enhance your creativity on the guitar.
In this lesson you're first going to learn why you would want to use capo on guitar. There are many reasons. Then I'll show you some super simple strategies to get rid of any confusion that can come with using a capo on guitar. You'll know exactly where to put it for any given musical context or situation you might find yourself in. Plus I'll demonstrate and explain the difference between what I call the perceived key with the capo and the actual key you're hearing.
And we'll have examples to support this throughout the video. So let's get to it. So first, why use a capo on guitar.
So there are several... reasons why you might do so. Initially you might use a capo when you first start learning guitar to sort of use it as a crutch for bar chords so this is not a good long-term strategy. We do not want to use the capo to avoid playing bar chords and this is where people sort of get mixed up sometimes and think it's cheating because you're just avoiding playing bar chords.
No no no that's not true at all. But if you're beginning guitar, of course, you might have a song with bar chords and you'll be able to convert it to open chords and play the song in the same key without having to play those bar chords. And I've taught that way with beginner students many times.
However, we always get into bar chords at the right time when they are ready. However, talking of bar chords, we can have chord progressions. For example, let's say we've got something B flat, F to E flat, right?
B flat's not going to be a key that's very... open chord friendly. There's not many open chords in the key of B flat.
We can capo to maintain the key, keep the key of B flat. But for example, I might capo at the third fret and I can get the same chords with G, D and C. Okay, we'll get into the details of that very shortly.
But that's just an example. Instead of playing here, with bar chords, I can use the open chords, which allow me to play. Play the things that you can do on open chords that you're not going to get on bar chords. okay so we do that because it's a creative choice not one where we're cheating. Another particular situation you might use one you've got two guitar players one's playing in the key of D with open chords down here maybe D A to G something like that right okay so you could have one guitarist playing in the open position there and then you might have another capo let's say the second fret to play the same chords in well the same key but different chord shapes because they're capoed and the contrast between the non-capoed guitar and the capoed guitar is a really nice effect so that's another reason why you might use a capo yet another reason could be just going to get particular chord shapes so i could have a song that's in the key of a a e d just using one four five chords here for simplicity right so a e d now they're open chords i can do open chord stuff on those shapes no problem however maybe I want to be in the key of A but use a different set of chord shapes to be in that key so I could for example cap out the second fret and use G major chord shapes and be in the key that I am in here A as you can hear okay so now G C and D give me different sort of possibilities all the open chords have a unique sort of characteristics about them as far as embellishments and all this sort of stuff and we won't get into that right here i have videos on that that in fact i'll link to one right now in the top right corner of this video where you can go and look at things to do with embellishments on chords and all that sort of stuff now there's one kind of obvious use of the capo that i just totally missed there that i'm just going to include here and that is just to change key without changing chords and this can be really good when you're working with a singer for example so let's say you're playing in the key of c whatever sort of song you're playing across one four five maybe there's an A minor chord in there whatever and let's say you're with someone and they're singing and it's a little low instead of changing all the chords and perhaps getting some shapes that don't suit the particular situation you're playing in you could just simply capo you might capo at the second fret and play the same thing and that might be in a better key for the singer if that's a little high maybe you capo the first fret you're changing key every time you move the capo but you're not changing the chords so that's a really obvious way to use a capo how do we know though where to put the the capo or what key we're actually in when I capo less.
The third fret, I'm using the chords of C. I'm in C major. Well, that's the perceived key.
We'll get to that. But how do we know what key we're actually in? So the first thing you need to know is just a very basic music theory. Don't go running. It's very, very simple.
You might already know it. You just need to know the musical alphabet. which has 12 tones you've got seven natural A B C D E F and then you've got the accidentals in between the sharps and the flats so you can see there on the screen there is your musical alphabet for the guitar one shift from one note to the the very next note, the consecutive notes in the alphabet equals one fret on the guitar. You probably know this, right?
So the low E string is E, obviously. Then we've got F, the very next note in the alphabet. I went up one fret, we go up one note in the alphabet. Then we get to the F sharp or the G flat, then the G, then the G sharp or the A flat.
They are the same note, essentially. Then the A, et cetera, right? So know the musical alphabet and know that one shift up in the alphabet equals one fret on the guitar. the guitar. What if I just capo at the third fret and I play like in the key C.
Okay, so the perceived key here is C. That's what I'm seeing, right? So I'm sort of perceiving, if you like. It's the key of C because I'm using the shapes of C major. However, what we're hearing is not the key of C.
So if you're playing with another instrumentalist, another guitarist who isn't capoed or you're... you're playing with a pianist or horns or whatever they're not hearing the key of c they're hearing the actual key how do we know what the actual key is you've got to see what the perceived key is which is c and then add the amount of frets you've capoed so i've capoed three frets here so you look at your musical alphabet you've got c and you move up three c c sharp d d sharp or what we'd probably more often refer to as e flat actually hearing the key of E flat here. So you just take the perceived chords or the root chord the C and you add the amount of frets C plus three frets.
So you go up three in the alphabet and you get to E flat. Let's do another one. Let's really reinforce this.
So let's say well let's just stay there but let's go to the perceived key of G. Okay so we've got the chords of G major the root chord being G. Okay so we're we're seeing the key of G here. And we would refer to it as G major capoed at the third fret.
But if someone's singing or there's, you know, another guitar without the capo, what's the actual key we're hearing? Well, it's still the third fret. One, two, three. Now we're on G.
So we go to G in the musical alphabet and we add three. G, A flat, B, B flat. The actual key is B flat. And you can hear, like, there's the actual B flat chord.
And here we are capoed at the third fret. G chord and away we can go playing our song. Let's do another one.
Let's just say we're at the first fret and we play C. Okay. Chords of C at the first fret.
The perceived key again is C major. That's what we're seeing, but what we're hearing is not C major. What is it? We've capoed at the first fret, so C plus one. C, D flat.
We're in the key of D flat or C sharp here. Okay. That's the actual key.
Perceived key again is C. Let's do one more here just to really drive this point home. So let's say we're at the fifth fret and let's say what do we want to play let's play D major so the perceived key is D major.
Got the 1 4 5 in D major that's what we're seeing D major capoed fifth fret what's the actual key we're hearing? Okay so we've got D plus 5 in the key of D here D so we've got D sharp E F F sharp sharp G. D plus five half steps or five up from D in the musical alphabet gives us G. So the actual key we're hearing here is G major.
What we're seeing are the shapes of D. So we would think in D here and we would perhaps describe this as being capoed you know in the key of D major capoed fifth fret or in the key of G major capoed third fret etc. But the actual key we can work out by just simply counting the frets that we've capoed at and adding that from the the note in the musical alphabet, right? So that's how you can work out what key you're in anytime you capo wherever on the guitar using a particular set of chords.
And that's the difference between perceived key and actual key when using a capo. So what about when we've got an existing chord progression that we wanna capo and get open chords for, let's say? How do we know what the options are?
How do we work those out? So here's another way Think about it. Let's say we've got a chord progression that is B flat, E flat, and F. Okay, some combination of 1, 4, 5 chords in the key of B flat. Again, as I said earlier, not a very open chord friendly key.
So where can we capo? There's going to be options here to do that. Well, there's this approach we can use where we think of the capo goes up, the chord goes down.
So if we capo at the first... fret capo's gone up one fret so the key or let's just deal with the one chord b flat goes down one so what's one back from b flat in the musical alphabet it's a so if i capo at the third at the first fret i can use the chords a major to get my actual key of b flat okay you can hear that right and capo to here right so again capo goes up chord goes down. So the capo goes up one fret, B flat now becomes A.
If we went up another fret, capo's gone up two frets now, so chord goes down one more, G flat. Not a good key to play open chords in, so not a good position to capo for this particular situation. But if we go one more fret, now we've gone, capo's gone up three frets.
So think of B flat being the original key, we move down three. So A flat, B flat, sorry, to A, to G. flat that's down two and then one more G and what do you know we've got G major chords that are going to give us our key of B flat.
So capo goes up chord goes down. Let's just go a little bit further here to see some other options. So far we've come across two in this approach we've come across that we can play okay A major capo first fret gives us B flat capo third fret G major chords gives us B flat. So if we went up one more now the capo has gone up four so we're at G G major. right b flat minus three notes in the alphabet got us down to g here we would be at g flat now not a good uh friendly key to capo in there so we know the fourth fret is not an option to capo to play our you know b flat chord progression if we're wanting open chords of course so if we go another one now we've gone to f not really a great key i mean we can play sort of the c there the five chord and but we're still going to get you know mostly bar chords so kind of defeats the purpose.
You could do it but it's not going to be the best position for open chords. If we go one more we've gone now the capo's gone up one more we're at F, capo goes up, remember every time you go up one fret the chord goes down so we're at F we've moved it up, chord goes down to E. E's not so bad we've got E and we've got A, you might need to bar the B you could use a piece of an open chord depending on what it is you're playing but that's not such a bad option. Typically for Bb it's going to be the first or third fret. but there are other options and you could go a little higher again and get into sort of mandolin territory if you want let's do one more example here just so we can really ride this point home just remember capo goes up chord goes down one fret at a time so let's say we've got a chord progression that's in e flat also a uh that was b flat also a chord progression that's not really you know open chord friendly at all okay so let's think about it e flat So if we capo first fret, we've gone up one fret, E flat, move back one.
What do we get? We get D. D is not bad. D is good because we've got the open chords in D major. So we could capo the first fret and play D major, the perceived key.
Remember the key we're singing, not the actual key we're hearing. We're hearing E flat, but we're playing in D. Okay, so we're still hearing that.
But now with open chords and we can do it. do all sorts of cool things. Okay if we go one more fret so remember capo up one chord down one we're at D now we're at D flat not a good key to play in for open chords so not an option really for this particular situation but if we go one more now we're capo at the third fret capo's gone up three we're originally on E flat move down three from E flat in the alphabet what do you get you're on C.
C's not a bad key I mean you've got a bar chord there but you've got two open chords and you got also A minor E minor there are more than just the one four five chords but we're just keeping it nice and simple here but C is a good open chord you know key it's an open chord friendly key if we went up one more it would be B not really a good open chord key if we went up another one B flat so capo's going up five now we're going down from E flat to B flat not great but if we went one more capo's gone up one more B flat down to A We've got the chords of A. to play in our key of the E flat. So perceived keys A and the actual key we're hearing is E flat. So that's really all there is to a capo. You've got the reasons I stated in the beginning as to why you want to do this.
And I'll link to another video in the top right corner where I go into some more details or more of the creative stuff with the capo and some examples of actually using it and all that. Okay. If you like this video, you'll love this ebook complete with video examples called 10 Melodic Fingerpicking Patterns You Can Learn in 10 Minutes or Less.
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free ebook complete with video examples 10 melodic finger picking patterns you can learn in 10 minutes or less you'll have it in your inbox within minutes let me know in the comments what acoustic guitar topics you'd like to see in future videos i love to hear from you a lot of the topics that i do cover come from suggestions from you so don't be shy drop us a comment below this video and i'll be sure to get to it and reply if you like this video then hit that like button and if you haven't already subscribe to the channel channel and hit the notification bell button so YouTube can tell you when I've released a new video, which I do every single week. Thank you so much for being here. This is Simon Candy from Acoustic Guitar Lessons Online.
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