There was a capo chart in the old classic course based on the open chords: A, C, D, E, G, Am, Dm, Em and Fmaj7 for capo frets 1 to 10. Again it gave a few populated and left for you to complete. I’ve not got to populating it yet. Interestingly, with the capo chart on the new course I’d have considered F and B chords as barre chords rather than open chords.
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Just substitute the major shape with the minor shape.
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The chart works with either Major or Minor chords. For example:
- No capo, Em chord grip = capo @ 7th fret, Am chord grip
I use this when I play Heart of Gold with 2 guitars. Sounds great!
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Justin, I love your course, and I’m going through the beginners’ grade for the second time to see what’s changed. To tell you the truth, I found this lesson too complicated and somewhat misleading. It’s much easier for me to think of the capos in terms of transposed notes (capo on the 3rd fret = everything + 3 semitones). I think there’s a lot of information here that will hardly be used when beginners will no longer be so. That’s my humble opinion, of course. Thumbs up for all the rest, and all the restyling.
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Indeed it does! I don’t know why I thought it was more complicated than that.
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Me too.
I found it best to print out the capo sheet, and mark the capo equivalent chords on my lead sheets for the songs I want to play with someone else.
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I think some of the confusion stems from the terminology some people are using in this thread. For example “So if you put the capo on the second fret and play an A chord the chord you are playing is a G.”
It would be a lot less confusing if it said “So if you put the capo on the second fret and play a G chord shape the chord you are actually playing is an A.”
It would help if the table clarified that the chords in the grey boxes are the chord sounds you want and the chords in the white boxes are the chord shapes you play.
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Yeah, that threw me too. IIRC, I got it backwards the first time I tried it.
But what I found most confusing was all the talk - at the beginning of the lesson - about how to figure out the alternate capoed chord shapes.
No doubt that is useful to know, but if you just want to try out the technique, it’s much easier to just use the table.
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Yes, the table would be clearer if you swapped the top two grey rows around so that chord in grey are at top of table.
The real life examples at the very bottom of the Learn More section mentions Handle Me with Care by Tom Petty. That should of course be Handle with Care by The Traveling Wilburys - although a cover version would’ve been great. 
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I’m excited to try this at my next Irish trad session… Like many other commenters, the logic explaining how it worked wasn’t entirely clear to me from watching the video, but it was fun figuring things out…
The chord grips you play are the same ones you’d use to play the song in a different key. The capo is shifting the notes produced by your “new key” chord grips, so the sounds produced matches the original key.
If your original song has a I - iv - VI - V progression in the key of G Major, you’d be playing: G maj - E min - C maj - D maj.
To play the same progression in the key of D Major, you’d be playing: D maj - B min - G maj - A maj.
To get these new key of D Major chord grips to produce the notes of your song (originally in G Major,) you need the capo to shift everything up by a perfect 4th.
You can count semitones in a perfect 4th to figure out where to place the capo, but I find it easier to go by the notes on the low E string. The note a perfect 4th above E is A, so if you put the capo on the 5th fret (A on the low E string) your key of D Major chord grips will sound the same as your song’s original key of G Major chords.
This trick works for every type of chord there is - major, minor, sus, etc.
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@jacksprat That was also confusing to me at first. Then I remembered that B and F don’t have open chord shapes. I also had tried out the barre chord lessons in Grade 4 and knew that you use the A chord shape to play a B barre chord.
Since I still don’t know all the notes on the fretboard, trying to find out what notes you would need to form a chord when the capo is on the seventh or ten fret is lost on me.
Of course, I am trying to learn the notes on the 6th and 5th strings, so perhaps this is a useful exercise for that
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Hi there, this video has broken my brain.
I’m trying to wrap my head around why exactly, in the first example, the D chord can’t be played with the capo on the third fret. The formula he seems to be following (if I have it right) is find the root note, find the chord shape that has that root note on that string and fits in front of the capo.
So, in that first example, the root note (D) is on the fifth string. A chord shape with a root note on the fifth string that fits in front of the capo would be A, right? And yes, I know we’re already using the A shape to play a C, but that just confuses me too.
I don’t know if this question makes any sense…basically, why doesn’t that D work exactly??
Thanks!
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@arsones
Anna, I am not an expert and don’t have much experience with using a capo. So hopefully others will correct me if I go wrong here.
To play a D chord using an A shape and capo you’d put the capo on the fifth fret.
If the capo is on the third fret with the D root on the fifth string then I think you are going to play a C chord shape. Note when playing an open C chord where the root note is relative to the nut. The barre serves the same purpose as the nut does.
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The way I understand it, though I maybe wrong as I’ve not had my morning coffee yet to wake me up, if you take any of the 5 open chords (C, A, G, E, D) and move them up lets say 3 frets and use a capo to barre the 3rd fret. Each chord will effectively have gone up 3 semitones. So thinking of the note circle if you consider the A shape it would be a C chord. If you consider a D shape it would be a F chord. Also the root note for D shaped chords the 4th string which would be F at the 3rd fret.
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@Socio that is exactly how it works and why it’s so important to know the notes on the E A and D strings and the chords in the most common chord progression. For example you have a I IV V in C and you want to play it using the A shape. The C(root) on the A string is the 3rd fret that where the Capo goes and the chord progression would be A D E the I IV V in A. If you want to use the D shape find the C (root) on the D string this is where the Capo goes the chord progression would be D G A the I IV V of D
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Thanks, David! This actually really helped–particularly the point about the barre acting as the nut. That and remembering Justin’s emphasis on which direction the chord goes in. It makes sense now!
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Thanks, socio. That’s definitely a way to think about it. More music theory-y, but also a good explanation. Thank you!
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I went through the examples of the C chords across the fret board that Justin shows at the beginning before bringing out the capo, and laid them out on a fret board diagram using different colors. Then did the rest of chord shapes to create the following diagrams. Hopefully it is readable, and presents the CAGED ideas being introduced here but in a more visual way.
The first diagram shows the C chords, the next the A chords, then G, E, and D chords.
Throughout, each chord shape has its own color. C shape is magenta, A shape is orange, G shape is yellow, E shape is green, and D shape is blue. When a fret position on a string is used for adjacent chords, there are two colors: the top is for the left chord, the bottom is for the right chord.
For each chord, the fret position on a string is marked with R for root note, 3 for major third, and 5 for perfect fifth, and this can help see the patterns that emerge.
So, taking the G-C-D chord progression that Justin plays at the introduction as an example, we can see that with a capo at the 3rd fret, we have a G chord using the green E shape. (Look at the G fret board and see the green E shape with the root and fifth notes on the 3rd fret.) Similarly we have a C chord using the orange A shape, but oops we have a problem with D – we’d need a barre on the 5th fret to use the orange A shape, so Justin uses a B7 shape to play a D7 instead of a D.
You can do the same thing with the other capo positions he demonstrates in the introduction (5, 7, and 10) and those don’t require any substitutions with dominant 7 chords.
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Thank-you for posting this.
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