capo question

Ron Victoria · From: New Jersey, USA

My friend loaned me a capo to try on my square neck resonator. I play open E and obviously know the frets in relation to chords and notes. So if I put the capo on the first fret or any fret, everything is moved and I wouldn't know where I am. Do people use a capo on lap or resonator guitars and if so, why? Am I missing something here?

thanks, Ron

Mark Eaton · Posted 16 May 2012 10:32 am

I don't believe a capo is nearly as commonly used on an electric lap steel as compared to dobro, though there is obviously "no law against it."

One of the main reasons a capo is used for dobro is for fast "fiddle tunes" in bluegrass. Since most players tune their guitars to "high bass" Open G (GBDGBD low-to-high) as opposed to E tuning, and fiddle tunes are often in the key of A, by capoing at the second fret your guitar is now tuned to Open A and on a song that might be 150 beats per minute, you have a better chance of hanging in there and using all your hammer-ons and pulloffs with open strings that you would utilize were a song in the key of G and you were not using a capo.

There are all kinds of other reasons to use a capo. For example I learned a new tune last week that features a banjo and it is in the key of F. We don't have a banjo player, so I put my capo on the third fret (Bb), which of course is the IV chord in the key of F. The F or I chord would be at the 10th fret, and the V chord of C is at the 5th fret. So for this song I emulated sort of a poor man's version of banjo rolls on the dobro, but by using a capo it made it sound more interesting rather than just play the thing without a capo and relying on closed chord positions, and since it was new to me, it reduced the danger of hitting bad notes.

I could go on for an hour about this stuff and no doubt many more posts in the thread will appear in regards to using a capo on a resonator.

The reality is that I actually don't use a capo very often, but the above are a couple scenarios where it comes in handy. For most songs at a moderate or slow tempo, I avoid the capo, and that includes country, folk, acoustic rock, Americana, etc. - I'm not referring necessarily to bluegrass as I don't even play that much bluegrass. But most of the best dobro players have all pretty much come out of the bluegrass world even though they might often play other genres of music.

The capo I use most of the time nowadays is the redesigned Beard Wave capo, which I purchased from Paul Beard himself at Resosummit 2010 in Nashville. It compares very favorably with the popular Bradley capo in ease-of-use and minimizing "tone death."
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Mark

Greg Booth · From: Anchorage, AK, USA

Ron, the short answer is that you can play in different keys without changing any of your licks. In your case, playing in E tuning, you can put the capo on the 3rd fret and pretend you are still in the key of E but play a song in G. Do you play songs in other keys using your E tuning, for example, A or B? You can put the capo on fret 1 and play all those same licks in Bb or C. Like Mark says, in general it's best to leave the capo off and learn how to play in all the keys, but sometimes you want to use open strings to advantage and the capo gives you a way to change your open tuning. In my case, I often use a modified G tuning on dobro, EBDGBD low to high, where I drop my low G to E. This gives me a fat E7 chord by fretting the 3rd string G at the 1st fret for a nice V chord in the key of A. If I want that sound for a song in Bb or B I can put the capo on at fret 1 or 2. One more thing, if you are playing up the neck in closed position the capo changes nothing, everything is still in the same place. Even though I'm capoed I try to remember the real key I'm playing in so I can find my normal closed position scales and phrases.
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Greg
Kathy Kallick Band
www.youtube.com/user/aksliderdobro

Mark Eaton · Posted 16 May 2012 11:19 am

As Greg points out, if you play everything up the neck in a closed position or by placing the bar across all six strings, there's no point in using a capo. The example I used of playing a song in the key of F and capoing at the third fret is that it gave me open strings to utilize on a song which was new to me and I didn't have much time to learn.
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Mark

Brad Bechtel · From: San Francisco, CA

Morgan Scoggins · From: Georgia, USA

I once met an old bluegrass guitar player. He only could play about four or five chords, probably G, C, D and F. He learned to play in every key by moving the capo up and down the neck to change keys. He liked all the open string bluegrass runs and could really play them so, a capo made it possible for him to play in different keys without cahnging his fingering.
I also noticed that Johnny Cash used a capo a lot and he said later on, that he only knew about four guitar chords until later in life.
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"Shoot low boys, the're ridin' Shetlands"

Ron Victoria · From: New Jersey, USA

I used it last night on the Stringmaster on the third fret making it open G for me. It was great being able to do all the blues licks I usually do in open E but in the key of G.

r

Jeff Garden · From: Center Sandwich, New Hampshire, USA

Use the capo and enjoy it, Ron. Word of warning though... DO NOT ask for Bill Hankey's thoughts on capos Laughing

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