Capos Are Not Cheating!

as originally published in Susan Tucker's Songwriters E-Tip Newsletter. To subscribe, email songconnection@aol.com.

There's no reason to be apologetic about using a capo, even if it is sometimes called a "cheater"!

When you use a capo you are applying at least a basic knowledge of music theory, and if you really know what you're doing it opens up a whole range of new sonic possibilities without your needing to learn lots of new chords.

First of all, let's address the "cheating" thing. It's true that an accomplished piano player can play in all (or at least most) keys without much difficulty, never mind the "transpose" button on most modern electronic keyboards. But the truth is that there isn't nearly as much of a difference in difficulty playing in different keys on the piano as there is on the guitar. In terms of what the change requires of your hands, it's less of a challenge than many beginners might think once you master basic technique....the greater challenge is mental, because every key has its own configuration of notes.

On the guitar, especially if we're talking about playing rhythm on an acoustic, there's a tremendous difference in difficulty between playing in, say, D and D flat. Adding bar chords into the mix levels the playing field a whole lot, but bar chords just don't ring the way open chords do....the instrument doesn't resonate nearly as much. Also, in many flat keys we lose the sympathetic vibration and overtones created by the open strings. (That's a topic for an entirely different article, though, suffice it to say that when you play certain chords other strings will sound whether you struck them or not....this is called sympathetic vibration and adds to the richness and depth of the sound).

So now that we've established that using a capo is part of maximizing the sonic potential of an acoustic guitar and is NOT in fact "cheating", let's talk about how we use it.

The most important idea to understand is how much you have moved or "transposed" a chord when you clip on that capo. It's helpful at this point to visualize a piano keyboard: white keys in a row, with black keys between them. The white keys follow the letters of the alphabet, while the black keys fill in the sharps and flats. If you're at all familiar with a keyboard, you already know that not every pair of white keys has a black key (and therefore a sharp or flat) in between, and here's where the main concept lies.

We're now talking about measuring the distance between two notes: between, say, two white keys when there's a black key between them, or when there isn't. The distance from A to B is what we would call a whole-step, because there's a black key between them. Same with C to D or F to G. But there's no black key between E and F or B and C, and so the distance in those two cases is called a half-step.

Still with me? It's simpler on the guitar....a half-step is one fret, a whole-step is two. And remembering these two small pieces of information are the key, because now you know that if you put a capo on the second fret you have moved (transposed) every chord up a whole-step. So C becomes D, F becomes G, and G becomes A.

Remembering where those naturally-occurring half-steps are also tells you that with that capo on the second fret, E becomes F SHARP because ordinarily E to F is only a half-step.

It's true that it takes time to soak up all this information to the point where you can use it without having to think too much....so let's throw in some shortcuts. Instead of thinking letters, let's now go to numbers: an eight letter sequence C-D-E-F-G-A-B-C would be numbered one through eight (seven really, because eight is just the recurrence of one....the pattern is really a circle just like on an old-fashioned clock). The chord built on each of those notes has the same number: so C is the "one chord", F is the "four chord", etcetera. Musicians often shorten this and just say "one", "four", and so forth. This is the "Nashville number system" in a nutshell.

So here are the shortcuts. First, common chords in two common keys and their numbers, but note three points first.

1. The minor chords on the 2, 3, and 6. Major chords may be substituted as well but these are what we would call "diatonic" chords, meaning they use only the notes of the scale.

2. The one exception is the use of the "flat 7" instead of the seventh note of the scale. This is actually a far more common chord in popular music than the diatonic 7, and makes an interesting substitution for a 5 or to approach a 5.

3. The flat 7 in both these cases uses a bar chord, the B flat and the F. This is a hurdle that everyone needs to get over at some point, but once again that's a topic for another article.

Here are our examples:

Key of C: 1=C, 2= D minor, 3= E minor, 4=F, 5=G, 6=A minor, flat 7=B flat.

Key of G: 1=G, 2=A minor, 3=B minor, 4=C, 5=D, 6=E minor, flat 7=F.

Now visualize the keyboard again. Keeping in mind the naturally-occurring pattern of whole and half-steps, you can move of "transpose" to any other key by using these patterns in higher capo positions. For example:

C with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes D, the 3rd fret becomes E flat, or 4th fret becomes F.
G with a capo on the 2nd fret becomes A, 3rd fret becomes B flat, and 7th fret becomes D.

As I said earlier, it will take some time to become thoroughly familiar with all of this. But I hope the basic concept is clear and its application useful. A future article will explore more creative and unusual uses for the capo.