Guitar stuff

Moonlight Sonata on harp guitar.
Fantastic

 

Ben Woods had a band called Flametal, that kind of combined flamenco and metal in an ensemble.
Now I think he does a lot more solo stuff, but the hybrid style is the same:

 

In case anyone is interested, I was playing around with a real simple progression in Garage Band, just I ii iii IV V.
I was in D major, so that would be D e f# G A.

Anyway, I shut down the iPad and played it on the acoustic. Nice, melodic.
Vaguely familiar but that happens all the time with these kinds of simple progressions. There are used in so much popular music.
Anyway, than a melody started in my head. I dropped the f# and that was '99 Red Balloons.'
D e G A


Note: I know it was originally '99 Luftballoons' by the German band Nena. However, my favorite version is the 7 Seconds cover.

 

A quick question about capos. I sing in my church choir, and when one of our guitarists is out I will bring my acoustic and fill in.

The lady who arranges the guitars likes to use capos to transpose (is that the word?) the chords into easier notes/keys. For example, she'll use a capo to change songs that have, say, E-flat and B-flat chords into a key with C, F, G, etc.

My question is, how does she figure this out? Does she take the key of, say, B and place the capo a few frets up to change it? As a guitarist who's basically self-taught, I'm not sure how that works ... but I'm glad it does!

 

Most often, it allows you to play first position chords in a different key.
The capo becomes the nut, and the key moves up a half step for each fret.

I have a guitar that I use almost exclusively with a capo at the second fret, so everything moves up a whole step: two frets = two half steps = one whole.

What this means is when I play a first position open G, it's now actually an A. Chord shape looks like a G but every note in the chord has moved up one whole step. My first position C chord shape is now a D, and the first position D shape is now E.

You shorten the scale of the guitar and raise the pitch a half step for each fret.

 

I should clarify that I use the capo on that particular guitar because I like the sound of it in higher register.mit doesn't help me with singing, quite the opposite, but the guitar sounds good.

Also, it's main effect if for first position chords because that is where you get the most open strings, at least that's true for most of us who are simple hobby players.

Open strings on an acoustic have sustain and timbre you can't easily get with closed and bar chords.

Using my example of the second fret, I can play some stuff in E without using the B bar chord because with the capo at the second fret I'm using different chord shapes. I IV V blues in in E is E A B, right. In a true first position that is two open chords and a B bar chord. However, with the second fret capo, my E chord is now the D shape, my A is now G shape, and my B bar chord has become an A shape, giving me two open strings and making a lot of pulloffs and suspensions easier on that chord.

Meanwhile, if I wanted to use my regular family of chord shapes I associate with E I could do blues in F#. That would normally be three bar chords, but now is two open chords and one bar chord.

 

Also, 'Runaround Sue' and 'The Monster Mash' are the same song.
Just putting that out there as a weird but true note.

 

Thanks Buck ...

I have been taught/learned several songs that use the capo on the second fret, for the exact reasons you described. "Sundown" by Gordon Lightfoot and "Box Full of Letters" by Wilco are a couple examples.

 

When I was young, I had this aversion to capos as well as open and alternate tunings.
Somewhere along the way I picked up the notion that these were tricks or they were cheating.

Now I wish I'd played around with these things a lot earlier. It would have really sped my understanding of the fret board.

As I mentioned, I keep one guitar capoed most of the time, and I'm finally getting the first rudiments of DADGAD tuning under my fingers in the past week or so.

 

I don't think I play any Gordon Lightfoot songs without a capo, and most are at second fret.

 

There are parts of "Another Saturday Night" and "Brown-Eyed Girl" that are identical.

 

Since we were talking about bar chords a bit, even though it was in a different context, I'm sharing what I think is a pretty could set of tips for playing better, less stressful bars: