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 knowing how to use a guitar 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!
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.
One of the questions I’ve been asked now and again is ‘What chords sound good together?‘
Well, there are a couple of ways for me to answer that question I suppose. I could show you specifically, and I could teach you the reasons why chords sound good together so you can figure that out on your own.
In a way, I’ve done both. Today’s beginner lesson shows you all the chords that work well together in the key of C. Simply, they are: C, F, G, Am, Dm and Em. In the video you’ll see that you can put these in literally any order and they’ll sound ok.
In the lesson I actually randomly play these chords in any order, to demonstrate that although it doesn’t end up sounding like any song you know, there aren’t any clashes -- these chords all work well together.
Over at OneFourFive.com I’ve take the time and gone into much more detail which chords work together which each other, but rather than giving you all the specifics, instead I teach the concept of I IV V and how to apply that to finding all the chords in any given key, in a matter of seconds. I’d recommend checking that out if you haven’t already.
Leave a comment below the video and let me know if this was useful for you or not. If so, I can make some more videos showing some of the other common keys as well.
The open D chord can actually be a lot of fun. For the purposes of this lesson, I’m assuming that by now you at least know some of the basic open chord formations… so this lesson is going to expand ever so slightly upon that knowledge. We’re only talking about the open D chord, but this handy little guitar tip can be thrown into literally just about any song you’ll ever come across that has a open D chord in it!
I use Dsus all over the place. Technically the sus I show you here is a sus4.
Quick Theory Lesson:
Wherever you see (sus) it is short for suspended -- it means you’re raising the the second note in the chord (in this case F#) a semitone to G, which is the fourth of D. F# is the third note in the scale… normally you need a root note (D), plus a third (F#) and a fifth (A) to build a chord. Suspending changes the third to a fourth. Confused? I hope not. But you can learn some guitar theory here.
Back to the lesson…
These simple little tricks you can play on the E string, while playing an open D chord, can really add dynamics to whatever song you’re playing. Enjoy…
I recently ran a poll here on GuitarTipsWeekly.com asking you guys what you wanted to learn most on the guitar. Guitar picking came in a dead tie with Strumming (both at 26%) and seeing as I’ve already done a lesson on strumming, I figured it was time to even the score and get one in on picking too.
Nothing special going on here -- basically this just takes a bit of coordination and PRACTICE.
If you really want to learn guitar picking, and it certainly is a cool skill to have, you have to sit there and practice. I can remember going over these patterns for hours when I started, working hard to get every single note nice and clear. If you’re still working on getting your chords sounding good, this can be a great way to practice getting a clear sound out of each string.
Start with the first pattern I show you in the lesson, basically picking your root note of the chord, then the top three strings in order ( 3 -- 2 -- 1). So for the G chord you’d pick the strings in this order: 6 -- 3 -- 2 -- 1.
The root of the C chord is on the 5th string, so you’d pick that chord in this order: 5 -- 3 -- 2 -- 1.
The root of the D chord is on the 4th string, so you’d pick that chord in this order: 4 -- 3 -- 2 -- 1.
You get the picture. Watch the lesson, and if you have any questions, leave a comment below the video.
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 knowing how to use a guitar capo.
The open D chord can actually be a lot of fun. For the purposes of this lesson, I’m assuming that by now you at least know some of the 
