It's surprising how much a capo can sweeten things

[noisepolluter]

Up till recently I'd pretty much just thought of a capo as a way of transferring open chords up the neck to match the singer's vocal key. Having started dabbling in recording recently I'm now noting how it changes the relative position of your pick or/and fingers on the strings and makes it sound a bit more delicate - great for improving fingerstyle clarity if you've got quite a warm sounding guitar to start off with.

[richardhomer]

George Harrison's beautiful playing on 'Here Comes the Sun' is a perfect illustration of this.

[ICBM]

Definitely, it changes the voicing of the guitar. I quite often write songs with the capo just because of the particular sound it gives, when I could just as easily have used the chord transpositions to play in the same key using open chords. eg capo at 2, play song in G with F shapes rather than no capo with G shapes, or capo at 5, play same song with D shapes.

[thermionic]

Yes, I've noticed that kind of thing. I often capo on 2nd when fingerpicking even though nobody sings along with it. Can be a bit of a squeeze from the 5th fret and above, but you gain some reach when you can put your little finger further away than at the nut.

Also great when messing about with recording is finding a fret to capo where you can play the same chords with different open-string shapes.

[bertie]

I remember a 'conversation' with Frankus years ago about why capo'ing isnt cheating and a necessary "evil" over learning to play in different keys/chord shapes. For a lot of fingerpicking the chord shape/open string/hammer on - tone is KEY to the whole 'feel' of the song tune.


Try the old top five string partial capo at Fret 2 - gives you "drop E" (good for f/mac, never going back ?) and then if you have two capo's you can then move that up the fretboard....................