How to Use a Guitar Capo
You don’t see too many people using guitar capo’s -- in fact I know some guitar players jokingly call them ‘lady fingers’ -- but the fact is you can get some really cool and unique sounds out of your guitar, completely different from what you normally hear, simply by using a capo.
Using a capo is the easiest way to transpose something, and can work great if you want to play a song that is in the wrong key for your voice -- simply move the capo to a place on the neck that works with your voice, and away you go!
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Just be careful though, if you’re playing with other instruments, you’re going to need to be careful to transpose the chords that you’re playing, because you are actually playing different chords once you capo the guitar. For instance, a normal open G chord, with the capo at the second fret, becomes an A chord.
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IF YOU ARE GOING TO PLAY ANYTHING FROM JAMES TAYLOR YOU BETTER HAVE A CAPO. I PERSONALLY HAVE NEVER USED ONE,I MIGHT HSVE TO GET ME ONE OF THOSE COOL CAPOS, THANKS FOR THE INFO
Johnathan, thanks for sending me the offers on I-IV-V. I am going to decline at the time. I am still working on a couple of the scales you sent. I do have a question though. I am able to follow along with most of the lessons that you send but I am confused about one thig. Scales. I know that on the fret board each fret has a note, Like the 6th string goes F f G g A a B C c D d E F. And each strings fret starts at a note depending on the string. So basically, there is an G note on each string and so forth for each note. If you are playing a G note on the E string and you play an G note on the D string are you playing a G in the scale of E and a G note in the scale of D?
Hi Wayne,
In regards to the last line of your question – no. A G note by itself could belong in nearly any scale. It depends on the other notes you play around it.
The strings themselves have nothing to do with what scale you’re playing in… in fact the scales themselves are just a collection of note names really – you can play them on whichever string(s) you please.
Take the pentatonic minor scale… if you start that at the fifth fret (6th string), then you’re playing in A minor (5th fret, 6th string is an A). If you want to play that scale in a different key, just move it to another fret. For instance, if you slid the whole pattern down to the 3rd fret, 6th string, you’d be playing G minor pentatonic.
Not sure if that clears things up much.
I’ve sent you an email as well..
Cheers
J.
I recommend going into more, clear & simple explanation about what to do when playing with another non-capoed guitar…how do you transpose.
I don’t know if you remember, but I had these questions also. When I transposed, I went the wrong direction in the transposition.
Hi Ric, yes, I remember our conversation on that. That was actually right after I made this video… but I need to do a followup to dig into that transposing issue.
Cheers
J.