The capo: what for, where, and why “they sing too high” is the song's problem, not yours
A capo moves the key to fit the voice and leaves the familiar grips where they are.
Adrian10 minupdated
I bought a capo late, because I long thought of it as gear you reach for when a barre will not come out. That changed at a campfire where half the circle was singing a song a third too high and nobody knew what to do about it. The thing cost less than a set of strings.
What it actually does
You clamp all six strings at one fret with it, and from that moment that fret is your new nut. The open strings go up by as many semitones as its number, while the open grips stay exactly the same. The fingers make a G, the ears hear something else.
The name is Italian: capotasto, the head of the neck, and that is the whole mechanism, with nothing hidden behind it. A barre does the same job with one finger, only it hurts.
How to put it on so it stays in tune
Put it right next to the fret, not on the wire itself, and parallel to it. Too far from the fret and the strings stretch, so the song drifts out of tune before you play the first chord. Too much clamping force does the same: it pulls the strings up and the whole guitar goes sharp.
Once it is on, run a thumb across the open strings and listen to each one. A dead or buzzing string means the capo sits crooked or too far back. And the thing I fell for myself: a capo is not a substitute for tuning. Tune the guitar first, put the capo on second, then check again.
“They sing too high” is not a sentence about your voice
I hear it at every other campfire, and for a long time I took it as information about myself. It is a sentence about the key of the song. The recording sits in whichever key suited somebody else, and nothing but habit says you have to play it there.
So instead of shouting over each other: open the song and switch the Key. Guitarmatic shows two of them, “For playing” and “As on the record”. When a capo can bridge the gap, it works out which fret on its own. The chords above the lyrics stay the same; only what you hear changes.
The books give a ready-made case. The melody sits too low, so you keep playing G, C and D and put a capo on the second fret. The whole circle moves up a whole tone and nobody has to change grips halfway through the verse.
A way round the barre
The second reason is purely mechanical: a song in C needs C, F and G, and F is a barre. The index finger lies flat across the neck and presses several strings at once, which is the opposite of the open grips you already know. The encyclopedia calls a barre one of the hardest things on the way in, and that is not an exaggeration.
Put a capo on the fifth fret and play G, C and D. The room hears C, F and G, which is the song, and your index finger never once lies flat on the neck.
The third reason is the sound: the same melody played higher up is brighter, because the vibrating part of the string is shorter. At the fifth fret it is still clearly a guitar. From the seventh upwards the body thins out and starts to sound like a ukulele, which you hear straight away and did not ask for.
Five frets and the whole table
The left column is the shape the fingers hold. The rest says what comes out when the capo sits on that fret. Around a campfire you need nothing beyond this.
| Grip | I | II | III | IV | V |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| C | C# | D | Eb | E | F |
| A | Bb | B | C | C# | D |
| G | Ab | A | Bb | B | C |
| E | F | F# | G | Ab | A |
| D | Eb | E | F | F# | G |
Minor grips behave the same way, because the whole tuning moves rather than a single chord. Am with a capo on the fifth fret sounds like Dm, Em like Am. So remember the distance, not the table: five frets is always a jump of a fourth, two frets is a whole tone.
Above the fifth fret a capo stops being an instruction for the evening. When the recording sits further than those five frets from a comfortable key, Guitarmatic does not offer a capo. It gives you a playable key straight away. That is what happens with Gdybym miał gitarę: you play it in G, and the recording sits in Eb, eight frets away.
What confused me
I thought a capo was cheating: that a real guitarist plays barre chords and everyone else takes a shortcut. Then I saw how many records were made with one, and what for. It is not the relief, it is the open strings that a barre leaves out. That is a choice of sound, not a shortcut.
The second thing: I never said both halves out loud. I would hold G, C and D with a capo on the fifth fret. When someone asked what key I was playing in, I answered “G”, and the song was in C. Keep both in your head: what the fingers hold and what the room hears.
Do this now
Open Morskie Opowieści and switch the Key from “For playing” to “As on the record”.
You play this one on Am, G, Em and C, and the recording sits five frets higher. After the switch the app adds a capo at the fifth fret and does not change a single chord above the lyrics. Play both versions back to back and listen to the difference.
Goal: the same song played in two keys with the same grips.
Progression strum: I V vi IV in the key of G.
Four chords on a loop, so you can hear that the progression is the same whatever the key. Play it with no capo, then put one on the second fret and play the same grips again.
Goal: four times round the loop without the hand stopping, in both versions.
Play this
three songs, three different casesMorskie Opowieści is the Polish version of Drunken Sailor. The app hands it to you with a capo at the fifth fret, so you see the mechanism there with no work at all. Silent Night has an F in it: switch its Key to G and the capo and the G, D7 and C grips work themselves out. Amazing Grace is the singing case: open grips only, and a capo you slide up the neck until the whole circle is comfortable.
» A capo is cheating. Learn your barre chords and stop fiddling.
Barre chords are worth having and they will come in their own time. Getting one to ring cleanly can take weeks or months, and the evening you have to play at is tonight, not in a month. Open Morskie Opowieści, switch the Key and play the same thing twice. If it still sounds like cheating after that, come back to this lesson after the campfire.
Read on
- Learning to Play GuitarColin McAllister, lesson 18The author gives the capo a lesson of its own and a ready exercise: clamp it at the third fret and run through the whole set of grips, listening to what changed.
- The Only Guitar Book You'll Ever NeedErnie Jackson and Marc Schonbrun, chapter “Capos”This is the shortest statement of the rule I know, and next to it sits the third-fret transposition table that the one above grew out of.
- The Best Beginner Guitar BookJake Posko, the chapter on finger painThis is the only book on my shelf that recommends a capo at the third or fourth fret as relief for sore fingertips, and it shows photos of a good and a bad placement.
- Capo (musical device)WikipediaThe entry lists the drawbacks the guitar books stay quiet about: a spring with no adjustable pressure, the effect on tuning, and the risk of marking the neck.
- Transposition (music)WikipediaThe entry shows where “can you play it lower” comes from and why it is completely ordinary: singers ask for a key other than the printed one.
- Barre chordWikipediaThe entry explains what a barre actually does and why it is so hard. It is worth reading before anyone tells you a capo is the easy way out.