Introduction to Capo Techniques

More on Capo Schtuff

Who’s afraid of the big bad capo?

For whatever reason, some people shy away from partial capos. Maybe they were scared off by a complicated fingering diagram that made it look like they would have to re-learn the instrument. Or maybe they once saw David Wilcox or Willy Porter put a partial capo on top of an open tuning and felt unworthy to even attempt it.

But there’s really nothing to be scared of.

This article is a simple explanation of partial capo technique. Read it with your guitar and a capo in hand. If you have a Short-Cut capo as well, even better.

There are two reasons to use a capo:

To change the key:

Most players use a capo to make a song fit their voice better. If you’re playing a song in C, but it’s a little low for you, you can put a capo somewhere up the neck – to play the same chord voicing, but raise the key. This is changing the key, but not the voicing.

To change the voicing:

Or, if you want to play a song in the key of B, it’s a whole lot easier to put the capo on the 4th fret and play a G chord than it is to always return to that B barre chord. This is changing the voicing, but not the key.

The simplest approach to partial capo work is through voicing changes. Let’s start there.

Structure:

If you put a capo on the second fret and voice a D major chord, you’re actually hearing E. In a D chord, you usually don’t play the 6th string. But if you take the capo off the 6th string and just clamp strings 1-5, you can let the low string drone, giving a nice full sound.

If you take the capo up to the fourth fret, you can play a C chord and still be in the key of E with the same drone. On the fifth fret you can voice B or Bm, on the seventh fret you can voice A or Am, and on the ninth fret you can play a G. Notice that as you move the capo up, you go down with the chords.

Second fret – voice D or Dm

Fourth fret – voice C or Cm

Fifth fret – voice B or Bm

Seventh fret – voice A or Am

Ninth fret – voice G or Gm.

But we never changed key, even though we played different chords. Every one of those voicings was in the key of E.

Color:

Now if you turn the capo over and just clamp strings 2-6, you leave the high E string open, and you can play all the same voicings. This affects the color of your chord.

The bass string is typically the anchor of a chord. If you want to add color to a chord, it usually happens in the middle or on top, but rarely at the bottom. For example, an A7 chord almost never uses the 7th (G) in the bass. It’s often in the middle (on the G string) or on top (the high E string, 3rd fret,) but it’s rarely on the low E string, third fret.

Structure is on the bottom, color is on the top.

The Short-Cut Capo:

A Short-Cut capo leaves the inside string and two outside strings open. Put a Short-Cut Capo on the second fret of your guitar, pointing down. This leaves the low E string open, and the high E and B strings open, too. Remember, structure is on bottom, color is on the top. Now when you play a D chord, you have the low E string open, and you can lift your fingers and have the high two strings open, too.

You can put the Short-Cut in all the same places you put the other capo, facing both directions. Just remember that when you leave the high two strings open, you’re making a color choice (this is easier) and if you leave the low two strings open, it’s a structure choice (which requires a bit more thought.)

There’s a video of this article on the Kyser website which is pretty easy to understand. If you still have questions though, contact me. Thanks!