Stop Struggling with Barre Chords: Use THIS Instead!

Hey guitar enthusiasts! If you are beginner guitar player and you're trying to learn songs and you run into a bar chord and it's keeping you from playing songs, well guess what? There's a tool you can use to eliminate those bar chords. It's called the capo and it's one of my favorite beginner tools that I use to make songs easier to play for new guitar students. And let's talk about it in this video. So there are 3 great benefits to using a guitar capo. One is one that I just mentioned, we can make songs easier to play for beginners by eliminating bar chords, which you might not be strong enough to play yet. Everyone talks about how frustrating bar chords are, and I use capos to eliminate them. Not only that, capos can be used if you're a female singer like me, um, to adjust the song for your voice. So this way you can use the same chords that you already know, and you can make the guitar sound different just by where you place the capo on the guitar. So this tool can be very beneficial, especially if you're a beginner that's still still building finger strength. So let's get into how we can use this capo to make our life easier. So what I'm going to do is I'm just going to grab a little pick over here, and I'm going to play you a chord progression. It's going to have a bar chord, so I want to show you how this works. So the chord progression I'm going to play is a double A, a B minor, which is my bar chord, a D chord, and then an A. It's going to sound like this. Okay, and if you're a '90s child like me, you grew up with music in the '90s, you might know what song that is. I have a lesson on it. It's Four Non Blondes, What's Up. So unfortunately, if you wanted to play that song, you're like, wow, this is my favorite song, I want to play it, but it has a B minor chord. What do I do? So what I'm going to do is I'm going to take this capo now and I'm going to put it at the 2nd fret of my guitar, all right? And we're going to play all open chords— G, A minor, and C, all right? All chords that I teach in my 7 Level Guitar System, okay? And it's gonna be different chords, but it's gonna sound the same, okay? It's gonna sound like this now. Okay, same exact song, different chords, easier chords, but now there's no bar chord. All right, so see, this is the application of the capo, and that's why if you go to my website, laurenbateman.com, you'll see that I sometimes have different versions of songs that use a capo. So for example, I just did a video recently, um, by Elliott Cass. The song was Make Your Own Kind of Music. Now that song doesn't have a capo, but I used a capo to make it easier for beginner guitar players to play. And that's one of the greatest benefits of a capo is that we can eliminate bar chords and make them easier for you to play. So what is a capo? Before we move further, what is a capo? Okay, a capo is just basically a clamp. All right, and this one here is a Kaiser capo. It's, it's what I've used all, all my life is Kaiser. And it's just a clamp. Okay, you can hear it, it squeezes. And what you do is there's a piece of rubber, this black rubber, and you put it over a specific fret. So typically, uh, if you see a song, it'll say capo at the 2nd fret, capo at the 3rd fret. All of these spaces here are what we call frets. So 1st, 2nd, 3rd. So if it was like put the capo at the 2nd fret, I would count up 2 blocks, I would squeeze my capo, and I would put it down the fret. Now we don't want to put it towards the back because that's where the most tension is. You want to put it towards the front of the capo, okay? Just like if you were playing a chord, if your fingers are to the front, it's easier to play. So put the capo towards the front metal part of the fret. And every time you raise the fret, it raises the pitch of the guitar. So let me show you. If I'm just going to play a G chord, okay, so we got a G chord, okay? Now I'm going to put the capo on the first fret. And play that same G chord. Now listen to it. It's a little bit different. Now I'm going to move it to the 2nd fret. Okay, I'm going to be really extreme now. I'm going to take it up to my 7th fret and play a G chord. Very different, right? It's much brighter because the notes up here on the guitar are much brighter. So basically, by using this capo, I can play a G chord shape, okay, but it allows me to kind of play different chords. So in that earlier example, I played an A, a B minor, and a D. Okay, we're in the key of A. The key is just a bunch of chords that sound good together. By putting my capo on the 2nd fret and playing a G chord, I'm technically still playing an A, a B minor, and a D. I'm not going to get into the music theory that's behind that. Um, there is some theory that goes into understanding why, but just know if you go on Ultimate Guitar, you go on my website, sometimes you're going to see a capo And it doesn't mean that the original song maybe used a capo. Sometimes they use a capo just to eliminate some of the bar chords. So let me put this into musical context for you, because sometimes people, when you start talking a little music theory, they're like, whoa, it's like speaking a whole nother language, which music is. So I'm going to take a song, Stand By Me, okay, Benny King. It uses the chords. Here's how I would play Stand By Me. When the night— A chord—

has come—

F sharp minor.

And the land is dark, there's my barkboard, and the moon is the only light we'll see.

So I have an A, I have an F-sharp minor bar chord, which might be tricky for you to play. I have a D and an E. Okay, so my student's like, Lauren, I really want to play Stand By Me, but I can't play that F-sharp minor bar chord. What do I do? So what you can do is you can take this capo and you can put it on the 2nd fret, same as the example before. Okay, so when I have a capo on the 2nd fret, my A chord is now technically a G chord. Okay, my F-sharp minor is now technically an E minor. My D chord is now technically a C chord, and my E chord is now technically a D chord. Okay, so A is now G. One more time. E minor— or F sharp minor is now E minor. Okay, the D chord is now a C chord, and the E chord is now a D chord. Okay, so the little formula for that is I put the capo on the second fret, so I have to lower the chord by two notes. So an A chord, 2 notes, the musical alphabet. If you don't know what it is, it's A, A sharp, B, C, C sharp, D, D sharp, E, F, F sharp, G, G sharp, and then we go back to A. So if I go from A and I go back 2 notes, I have G sharp, G. Okay, if I am on F sharp minor and I go back 2 notes, I have F, I have E, so E minor. If I am on a D chord and I go back 2 notes, I have C sharp, and then I have C. And the last chord is E. If I go back 2 notes, I have D sharp and D. Okay, so that's the simple math behind it. But now I'm going to play the same thing. So before I was using the, the chords A, F sharp minor, D, and E. Now I'm going to use G.

When the night has come and the land is dark and the moon It's the only life we'll see.

So I didn't have to change my voice or anything. I just adjusted the chords to eliminate the bar chord and use chords that I already know. Okay, so you can see how a capo— if even if you only know a few chords, you can play so many, many more songs by using a capo. Now what if— because Stand By Me is sung by a man and I'm a woman, so my voice tends to be higher. Even though I'm an alto, my voice tends to be higher than the average male voice. So what if playing Stand By Me isn't— that's not the right key, okay? It's not the good spot for my voice. So let me use a song like Hey Jude. So Hey Jude starts off on a D chord.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Okay. Take a sad song and make it better.

I mean, it's okay now, but it could be better for my voice. So I'm gonna take a capo and I'm gonna be like, hmm, let me try. So usually if you're a female, second, third, or fourth fret. I'm gonna try the third fret and see if it's—

Hey Jude, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better.

Do you hear how my voice sounds much better than in the original position? We call that the original key of the song. So here I don't have much depth to my voice.

Hey Jude, don't make it bad.

It doesn't sound horrible, it doesn't sound horrible, but I have a lot more control and power here.

Hey, don't make it bad. Take a sad song and make it better.

Here, my voice comes alive a little bit more. I'm actually able to have maybe a little bit of vibrato to it. It's just a much better place for my voice. So if you're a female singer, you can use a capo. You can keep the chords exactly the same and just move the capo around until you find a spot that feels better for your voice. Another advantage to our capo. So these are some common beginner mistakes when using a capo. The first one is students sometimes put the capo right on the fret. As I mentioned earlier, do not put the capo right on the fret. It's not gonna work. You want it just behind the metal here. Don't put it in the back of the fret, okay? Put it right towards the front of the fret. That is the best way to do it. Another mistake students make is it says, you know, capo on the second fret, capo on the 3rd fret, and sometimes you put it on the wrong fret, it doesn't quite sound right. So it's very important if you see a song that says capo on the 2nd fret, you count up 1, 2, and you put the capo on the 2nd fret. Another mistake students make is they put a capo on and they forget that it changes the key, what I was just showing you with the song Hey Jude. So we have to adjust our voice with the capo sometimes if we are using it to adjust for our voice. And another mistake that sometimes students get confused about, so when we're making chords— so say I'm playing a D chord, okay? I'm playing a D chord without the capo. So this is my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fret, and I make my D chord like this. When we put a capo on— so say it says put the capo on the 3rd fret and it says to play a D chord— this is technically now my 1st, 2nd, and 3rd fret. So you would make your D chord what we call relative to the capo. So it'll say play these chords relative to the capo. So capo's on the 3rd fret, play pretend now that fret 4 is fret 1, fret 5 is fret 2, and fret 6 is fret 3, and play your D chord as if this capo is this nut of your guitar. So that's sometimes something that confuses beginners, so I just wanted to clarify that here. And I also just want to make a note: remember when I took the capo up here and I made the guitar— sometimes it's, it's not the right application. Sometimes it makes the guitar sound too bright, okay? And if you're a male student that has big hands, You'll notice that the frets down here are much smaller than the frets up here. Okay, these frets get smaller, so it gives you less room to play the chord. So sometimes, particularly male students have bigger hands, if you get up into the higher frets, it makes it very hard to play the chord. You feel like you can't fit your fingers in. If you're not like me and you have smaller hands and smaller fingers, it can be hard to fit like an A chord in here. Or try playing a B7. I have to play— actually have to play over the capo to do that. So sometimes using a capo isn't the best solution, and ultimately you'll want to graduate and start learning bar chords. But until you build up the strength, you can use a capo to help you play a lot more songs with the chords you actually know. So if you know the chords G, E minor, C, and D, I highly recommend you go check out my Stand By Me lesson over there where we're going to use a capo to play that song entirely through without using any bar chords, go check out that lesson right now.