The Key, And How It Is Tamed

If you ain’t cheatin’, you ain’t winning’…

Yesterday’s Bonus Round answer is a “Capo” - a seemingly magical device that can let you play in a difficult key, using familiar, and easier to play, chords.

It’s not really magic of course, it’s mostly applied arithmetic, and we’re going to figure out what that means and how to use it to our advantage. I’m going include some links and pictures below that will help us along the way.

First, what’s a capo?

Some different types of capos

A capo is a device that clamps in some fashion across the neck and strings and fretboard of the guitar and essentially “frets” each of the strings at the fret where you’ve placed it, in effect “shortening” all the strings (and the available fretboard) and raising the pitch of all the strings at the same time. How much depends on which fret you choose to place capo on. In reality you place the capo just behind the fret (on the nut/headstock side). We “number” the frets from top to bottom, so the first fret below the nut is 1, the second is 2, etc. We say, “I’m capoed on 1, or I’m capoed on 2” or whichever fret your capo is clamped just behind. I try to avoid capoing higher than 4, or sometimes 5 - the pitch just gets too high, but I’ve seen folks capo as high as 7, I think to produce a kind of “mandolin” effect.

How do we choose which fret to capo on? Here’s where the “magic” of a little music theory arithmetic comes in. We’ll be spending more time on music theory as we go along, but the basic premise here is “What chord shapes do you want to use?”. Most of us start out using the chord shapes found in the key of C, because they’re relatively easy and you can stay on the first 3 frets. The useful chords (and thus, chord shapes) in the key of CMajor are C, Dm, Em, F, G, and Am (check Jguitar.com for chord diagrams if any are unfamiliar). We number those 6 chords as the 1, 2minor, 3minor, 4, 5 and 6minor, though when talking about them we just say “the 1”, “the 2”, etc. It’s important not to say the “first” or “second”, because those terms have different meanings in musical “language”. Since there are seven chords in a key (8, if you count the octave, but let’s leave that for another day!). Bdiminished (written Bdim) is the seven chord in CMajor, but diminished chords are not favored in modern music (though they were a staple of classical music) - they sound discordant to our ears accustomed to common modern genres, so they are rarely seen. We’ll talk about what makes a chord major, minor, augmented, diminished, or extended as we forge ahead on this journey, but one step at a time for now!

You may see chord progressions written in major keys depicted as Roman numerals, they look like this: I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi - where the upper case denotes major chords and the lower case denotes minor chords. Here, the Roman numerals correspond to any key, starting with a note we call the “root” of the key. The root is just whichever note the chord is built from (we “build” chords from the lowest bass note up according to a formula we’ll learn later, and we build up keys from the chord we’ve chosen for the root according to yet another formula we’ll learn later).

Stay with me here, we’re about to get back to the capo!!

An example: you want to use the chord shapes in the key of CMaj (as above), because you know them and they’re reasonably easy. Unfortunately, the key the song you want to play is written in DMaj and it has some nasty looking barre chords, F#m and Bm!!

Just take this next bit on faith for now and we’ll learn more later: D is a note pitched a “whole tone” above C, and a whole tone is made up of two “half-tones”. Put that together with the fact that each fret on the guitar neck represents a half tone “interval” from the fret above or below it and D is 2 frets “above” C in pitch, but in movement direction physically, it moves down towards the soundhole.

Here’s a typical Cmaj shape:

Here’s how the Cmaj shape looks with a capo on 2:

The capo forces your ring finger on the A string, which was playing a C to now play up in pitch two half tones (also called “semitones”) or one whole tone to a D, and because of the capo, the other open and fretted strings now make the the other notes of the chord. Likewise, while capos on 2, you will replace the other common chords in the key of DMaj (D, Em, F#m, G, A, and Bm) with the chord “shapes” of CMaj while playing the notes of the chords in DMaj! Magic!!

Not really - just music theory arithmetic - and some purists will say you should just learn the chord shapes of DMaj and play them without the need for a capo. They’re right, but that ignores the fact those chord shapes are more difficult for beginners, maybe difficult to the point of quitting. It’s far more important that you keep playing in order to improve in all areas, so if you’re “cheating” in the eyes of others, so be it, you’re playing music, not poker!

If you’re more visual in learning, here’s our friend Sean Daniel with pretty much the same information (I was actually looking for the video below it, I had not viewed this one before, but since it covers mostly what I talked about before in an audio visual format, I’m including it):

This one is actually the one I was looking for, maybe a bit advanced, but reinforces what I wrote about above, in a visual and spoken format:

Last thing for this week on capos: Sean likes the clamp type. I’ve used all the ones in the pictures at the top of this newsletter, but I prefer the Shubb type (it’s the top, stainless steel one). Each has its advantages - clamps are easiest to reposition, but they kinda get in my way; I like the G7s (bottom pic), but they kind of move around on me if they’re not clamped (squeezed) really tight; and the Shubb type can’t clamp to the headstock because of the way it’s made so you have to put it somewhere (and then I always have to go looking for where I last left it). That said, for me, the Shubb stays in place, minimally distracting and bulky. Your mileage will vary!!

Usual disclaimer - no financial interests or connections to any of the above people or brands!!

Bonus Round: Who wrote and performed the 1952 hit from yesterday’s post’s subtitle (were you paying attention?)?

That’s all for today!! Hit the comments for questions, etc!!

Cheers and keep playing!!

Michael Acoustic