This lesson builder drives me crazy. This should be played in a 3/4 time signature. Unforunatly I can't do that with this lesson builder. However, even though it sounds a bit different you will get the idea.

I use a capo in this song. If you don't know what a capo is: It is just a spring loaded device that will hold all your strings down at a certain fret. You've probably seen guitarists using them. For this song I put the capo between the 7th frett and the 8th frett. Therefore all the notes on the 8th frett will sound when you hit an open string. Pretty slick huh? There is no way for me to show this on this lesson builder. However, it won't be too difficult to figure out. Anytime you see a note on the 8th frett you will just play that note open as you would an open string normally. With the capo holding down the 8th frett your open notes which are usually E,A,D,G, will now be C,F,Ab,Eb. The notes played above the capo will be the same as they always are.

Capo Notes

If you walk up through the scale you can see how this works. I'm going to walk up though the scale in a way that makes it plain to see how it works like this:

C minor

So, by that scale sequence you can clearly see that ALL the notes on the 8th frett are in C minor. Look at that patern as well. I use that very patern with three fingers flying. It's a nice riffing patern that you can play extremely fast, but that's another lesson.

This song is in C minor. All the notes that the capo is on are ALL within that scale. All the notes that I frett are within the scale of C minor as well. The notes in the scale of C minor are: C,D,Eb,F,G,Ab,Bb.

You can move the capo anywhere on the neck and play around with it other than just where I have it here. There are many posibilities for using one even on bass. It opens a whole new world for tapping as well. You can also use different tunings for a capo. I'll just give you a quick example while using our C minor scale Let us look at a C minor Bar Chord which would be:



We could tune our strings so we could put our capo straight accross the neck and have this bar chord played when we are playing the open strings. How do we do this? Simple, just tune your E-string to a D, and tune you G-string to an F and put the capo between the 9th & 10th frett so that the 10th frett notes are played when open. Bare in mind that NOW the notes above the capo will be different on your E-string and G-string. On the 12th frett of your G-string it will now be an F. and the 12th frett of your E-string will now be a D. Every note on the E & G string will now be a full step lower because you tuned those strings down a full step lower. I will try to put a lesson up with this tuning at some point in the future. You could certaily do some interesting picking and tapping with a tuning of this nature.

A capo is probably something you won't use often. It is really fun to play around with. It's also just another tool to have in your toolbox, and you can never have too many tools.

Have fun with it.