You're shortening the scale of the instrument. It also brings the frets a little bit closer together. If you put a capo on, it'll bring the action down to a more manageable level. So the other good thing about a capo is, say the strings are a little high on the guitar, your action's a little high. Anyway, so here's a C chord, but I'm actually sounding out a D chord. I know when I was starting out as a kid, playing in a lot of bluegrass situations, moving the capo around the guitar or the banjo really kind of illuminated how different chord shapes can be interchangeable dependent on what key you're in. You could also move it up to here and play an A-shaped chord that would be still sounding out a D chord, if you were playing a piano or some other instrument that you could not use a capo on.Īnd so experimenting with the capo actually can open up the fingerboard for you in a really fun way. And it just separates the sound of the two guitars a little bit by putting this guitar up in register, just barely. And another guitar perhaps could be playing a D chord and an A chord. The second fret is a place where we can be playing a C chord and a G chord.

And so I use different ones, depending on what might be handy.Īnyway, here is a common place to put the capo. This is one that kind of has a popping action, where I just press this latch down like this. You slide it up and down and screw it down. Squeeze it, put it into place, and let go of it, and it just clamps onto the strings. Some are just a clamp style that you just grip. We're going to take a look at the capo and how to use in on the guitar, especially in country music.

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