Description
Now that you know how to apply the capo and get your guitar in tune again, it's time to explore the simplest way to use it.
Let's say you had a simple song that went 2 bars of D major, then 2 bars of C, 2 bars of G and 2 bars of A7. It could be anything, but let's use that as the example right now.
Then let's say that key is not right for the singer- whether that's you or someone else.
If it's a little too low to sing comfortably, then it's an easy fix, where you just move the capo up one or two frets at a time, until it feels better.
Let's say that we end up trying the capo in the 3rd fret and that feels right for the singer.
Now you just play exactly the same part as before, only now you're up where the frets are a little narrower, which can sometimes be tricky.
This is an easy way to change the key of a chord progression or “transpose†as it's called. It's much simpler than having to analyze the chord progression and construct in another key. If the key of the open position, without the capo, is too high for the singer you'd technically have to start up in the 12th fret and work your way down systematically. However capos get harder to use above the 7th or 8th fret, so this is not always ideal.
Instead ask the singer start the melody down an octave. This will most likely make it way too low, but then you just keep moving the capo up gradually like we did it before, and you just may get lucky.
There's no getting around sometimes having to actually transpose the song and use different chord shapes altogether, and we'll talk about how to do that later, but at least this trick will often save you from having to do that.
Now just to get our ears and our fingers used to the capo, let's play our chord progression twice with the capo in the 3rd finger over a simple backing track. If you don't have a capo yet, just watch and take in the sound.
Lesson Info
