Bill Dutcher – Modern Acoustic Guitarist

Ahh…Capo’s…A guitar players best friend and better yet  secret weapon!  For those who do not know what a capo is it’s a clamping device that presses down all six strings at a designated fret.  Kind of like barring your first finger across all six strings.  What’s cool is that if you only know a hand full of open position chords you can transpose those fingerings to other keys with the capo.  Ex:  Play an open position E major chord.  Then clamp the capo across all six strings at the 3rd fret.  Now play that same E Major shape with the capo on and your in G Major! Well….Let’s jump off the deep end… There are capo’s called ‘partial capos’ that only bar certain strings.  Manufactures such as Shubb and Kyser make these.  Shubb makes a partial capo that frets an open position A Major chord when placed on the second fret.  What’s cool is that if you reverse its position you get an Esus4 chord.  Kyser makes a ‘drop-D capo where they cut away the contact point for the low E string so it only clamps strings A-D-G-B-E strings.  If you put it on the second fret your in ‘Drop-D’ but in the key of E.  Try it by playing an open position D Major chord with it on the second fret.  They also make a banjo/mandolin capo that works great for only touching 4 to 5 strings.  Even more interesting is one made called the “Third Hand Capo”  it actually has 6 little wheels on the metal capo shaft that you can turn off or on the strings.  The possibilities are endless with what you can come up with.  But wait!  

Now let’s get really over the top!  What about combinations of multiple capo’s?  Why not?  Hey, were trying to explore different possibilities here so go for it!  How about even doing this with alternate tunings?  Now were really getting crazy!  Here’s one I currently use.  First tune the low E string down one whole step to D.  Then tune the B string up one half step to C.  leave all other strings in standard tuning.  Now, put a full capo across all six strings at the 2nd fret.  Then put a partial capo across the E-B-G-D strings at the 4th fret.  If you use the low E as your root you get a cool E9 chord.  If you use the A string as your root you get a cool B7sus4 chord.  Which ever road you choose just follow the steps in the previous column:  find diatonic fingerings for Major, minor, Dom7 and dim chords for the key your in and voila! you have your ‘roadmap’ to start composing .  Of course you could just start noodling and find cool fingerings and let intuition guide you.  After all were trying to break out of the same mold we fall into when composing.  So have fun and start twistin’ knobs and clampin’ capo’s!