Capo Theory Masterclass

0:00 We're going to be talking about the capo today because that is something that we see with uh worship music, with acoustic guitar, even rhythm electric guitar a lot. So, usually when we think about the capo, we think, well, I'm using the capo so I don't have to play bar chords. I have a definition of why we use the capo or what the capo does, what the purpose of the capo is. The capo will change the key shape. There are two terms that I want us to understand before we jump into this. One is key. The musical key. Two is key shape. Sometimes we think of the capo as [music] if I'm playing here and I'm playing a song in the key of G and then

0:45 I put my capo on now I'm in G sharp or A flat. Yes, the capo can do that. But that's not using utilizing the capo to its fullest extent. So the terms musical key is one that we're going to define and really make sure we all everybody in this room understands what a key is. But the second term is what we call key shape. Let's talk about key what a musical key is. I think of songs as living things because we're taught to serve the song. A musical key is basically a musical environment or ecosystem in which a song is living in or which a song has been created in. In our world, different environments, different ecosystems, there's a certain set of rules that everything needs to abide by to survive in this ecosystem.

1:33 In a musical key, the rule that everything needs to abide by is the keys major scale. So that means if I'm playing a song in the key of C, every note of the guitar chords, every note of the piano part, every note of the lead guitar line, the vocal melody, the baseline, every one of those notes has to come from the notes of the C major scale. For this class, you do not need to know what those notes are. I just want you to understand the concept. I always tell my students, concept over everything. Okay? That means if a song is in the key of B flat, all of those notes of that song are coming from the major scale of B flat. B flat major scale. Now that's what we refer to as the naturally occurring rules in music. There's a term called dietonic, which is

2:19 a fancy way of saying no rules have been broken. Okay? If a song is in the key of C and all the notes are from the C major scale, no rules have been broken. Music is a creative realm. Thank God we have artists and singers and bands and composers that break these rules all the time. For example, the song the song imagined by John Linen is in the key of C, but there's a G sharp in the chorus. He has broken a rule. It's not completely dietonic, but it's still mainly in the key of C. Okay, good so far with what a key is. The key is the thing that you see on Planning Center where it says the thing next to the okay, that note next to the name of the song. And if you see like G, C, or D, you're probably like, "Oh, no problem." If you see an E flat, you start sweating. That's the key. There's another term called key shape. Key shape is something that only guitar players

3:06 really need to understand. The term key shape means the shape of the one chord. Whenever we refer to the term shape on the guitar, it means what the fingers look like they're doing. This looks like a G or this looks like a C. Okay, we're going to get really into that today. Another way of thinking about key shape, and this is probably the more practical way of thinking about it, is the key shape is the key you're pretending to play in. I tell my students, guitar players are the only instrumentalists that need to know real things, but also they need to pretend. They need to imagine. If I have my co on the third

3:52 fret and I'm playing a G C D E minor, it looks like I'm in the key of G. I'm not in the key of G because this note is the note B flat. I'm technically in the key of B flat, but I'm in the key shape of G because it looks like I'm in G. So, we have these two differing things. The musical key and the key shape, actual key and the key we're pretending to play in. Good. So far >> good. >> Okay, we're all Okay, good. Something else before we jump into it. If you are playing in the key of G, not only is that in the key of G, it's also the key shape of G. So there are sometimes they overlap when we're in the open position. Okay, how are we doing at

4:39 this point? There are five open keys on the guitar. There are only five. An open key is a key where the one chord can be played in a purely open position. How do we feel about what a one chord is? Okay, Nashville number system. We're going to talk about that a little bit. The one chord is basically the chord that it is the chord that has the same name as the key name. So, if I'm in the key of G, the one chord is G. If I'm in the key of B flat, the one chord is B flat. Good so far. Excellent. So, there are only five keys in music that can be played on the guitar where the one chord is played in a purely open position. What I mean by purely open

5:24 position is every note of that chord, the 135. We don't need to know that theory for this today, but every note of that chord can be played utilizing open strings, at least one open string. There are only five chords on the guitar, and we're talking major keys, we're talking major chords. There are only five open chords that can be played on the guitar in a purely open position. And those are the five chords of C, A, G, E, D. Has anybody heard of the caged system before? If you understand how to play an open C, A, G, E, and D on the guitar, that is all you need to master the entire fretboard of the guitar. It helps to have a good teacher, but that's that's all we need. I go through the cage system method for all of my students and I go through like these

6:10 master the fretboard uh master classes and that's the only prerequisite and they end up understanding the entire fretboard in a really short amount of time. The open chords that you can play the chords in music that you can play in a purely open position C A G E and D. [music] So these are the five one chords that we have for the open keys. So that means when we are playing a song in any key, we have five key shapes we can actually play in using the capo. So what tends to happen is when you maybe get when you get a planning center thing and you see like Eflat on there, sometimes what happens is we just Google like uh holy forever Eflat capo chart and it just

6:55 spits out the answer. We are in a world right now and in the society we live in right now, we are programmed to not think for ourselves. I recommend you listen to this so you actually know the inner workings of all of this stuff. You don't want to search just for answers. You want to search for how the answer happened. Okay? So if usually what happens is if we don't do that, if you don't just Google key of Eflat, holy forever capo chart, you know, just capable 1D or whatever. Sometimes I see people where they, okay, capo one, okay, I could kind of do it if it's an E. What would happen if I'm on capo or key of D? What would happen if I do capo 2? What would happen if I do capo 3? And they try to figure out like that. We as a guitarist, whether you're a rhythm guitarist or lead guitarist,

7:42 you want to serve the song, but you want to be in control of everything you're doing. You want to be, you do not want to be in a position where the song is controlling you and we don't know what's going on. Any key you will ever play in, there are always five capo locations. No more, no less. There will always be five capo positions, okay? Or capo locations. These are related to the five open keys of C A G. that capo chart that I showed you and I'm going to show it to you again. Whatever key you're in, there will always be five capo locations for to pretend to play in the key of C8, A, G, E, or D. So, what I'm going to show you is how the capo chart was made. It is made from the cage system. The cage system is basically just a navigation

8:29 and visualization tool on the guitar utilizing the five shapes from the open positions of C, A, G, E, D. What I'm about to do might look really freaky and maybe you've never done it before. If you've done it before, awesome. I have plenty of vid. If you just go on my Instagram and just do at least like one thumb scroll, you'll get plenty of videos of me explaining this. I've got YouTube videos of me explaining this. My courses explain this like in HD videos. If you really want to see this, please know in in order to understand what I'm saying and understand how where to place your capo, you do not need to do any of this. Okay? The purpose of the cage system is visualization. It's not sound quality because very rarely will I actually play a C chord like this. But

9:16 if I put my cable, I want to know where I am. Or if I'm playing a C major scale, I want to know where that G shape is. And we're going to talk about that for the next lead guitar class. Okay? So, you do not need to do what I'm about to do here. Okay? And I have long like demigorgan type fingers, alien fingers. So, it looks painful for me. It's not. I know the legend has it that I broke my finger to be able to do this. I did. So, we've got I'm going to do this for the key of C. Okay. For the There is something called the cage blueprint, which is a blueprint of whatever key you're playing. And we're going to talk about that a lot in the lead guitar class. If you are interested, I would recommend hopping in there. So, if we are in whatever key we're in and we want to map out the fretboard for that key,

10:01 all we need to do is find the five cage system shapes of the one chord of that key. If we're playing a song in the key of C to find the blueprint for the key of C, I need to find one thing, the five connected cage system shapes of the C chord. So, I'm going to do that here. I'm going to start with the C and the C shape. That one we probably know. Now I'm going to use what I call the there's a lot of the cage system terminology that I've created. So this is if you the furthest fret rule is what I call it. Okay. So if I have C and the C shape to connect to the next shape, I use what I call the furthest fret rule, which is the fret that is furthest from the nut of the guitar from the open strings. That would be the third fret. That is where you place the index finger bar for the next

10:47 shape, which would be C and the A shape. Now we're going to do that furthest fret rule again. I'm going to go to the furthest fret of this shape, which would be the fifth fret. Place the index finger bar for now C in the G shape. You could play it like this or like this. This is just a little bit easier way to do it. I'm going to use that furthest fret rule again to connect to the next shape, which will be the E shape. That's the eighth fret. Place the index finger bar down for C and the E shape. Now I'm going to go to the furthest fret again. Use that same rule to connect to the D shape. The furthest fret is the 10th fret. Place the bar down for C and the D shape. So now I have the five connective shapes of the C chord. This is now my blueprint for the key of C. Now the cage system, just little side note here for the people who want to get a little bit nerdy with it. The cage system is

11:32 cyclical. Everything in music is cyclical. C A G E D back to C like a clock. The notes of the fretboard are all cyclical as well. The guitar is cyclical. We think of it as a box or a grid or a matrix. We do eventually want to be thinking about it as a circle. When you get to the 12th fret, the open string is the same as the 12th fret, and the guitar repeats itself. So, you can actually connect the D shape back into the C shape. You don't have a lot of room on acoustic guitar, but I'm going to do it so to show you it is possible. When you complete the cycle and connect the D shape back into the C shape, that furthest fret roll will change by one fret. Instead of the furthest fret, which would be the 13th fret, back by one, which would be the 12th fret, that's where the bar would be placed for now. Cshape, just one octave higher. It's just a little high to play. But we don't need to be doing that for this one right here. So now I've got the five shapes of

12:20 the C chord. That now is the blueprint for the key of C. Now what I have done, again, the answer to this is on the capo chart. I'm showing you how it was made. Wherever the index finger bar was, that is a capo location. Whatever shape my fingers were forming, that's the key shape. So the first option if I'm playing a song in the key of C, think of these what I'm doing as the one chords. Okay, the first option is the C and the C shape. Well, I don't need a capo for that. Open can be or no capo can be a capo location. Okay, if I'm playing as if it's in C or in the key shape of C, I don't need a capo. Okay, I could do capo 3 and play it as if it's in A. I could

13:05 do capo 3 and my one chord now looks like an A. I'm pretending I'm in A. I'm in the key shape of A. I could do capo 5 and I'm in the key shape of G. I'm going to pretend I'm in G. I could also do capo 8 and pretend I'm in E in the key shape of E. I could do capo 10 and pretend I'm in D in the key shape of D. So though that is how I find every capo location no matter what key I'm in. I'm going to do it for a key that we probably despise like E flat or G flat or something. Okay, but is that kind of making sense? You do not ever need to do that with your fingers ever. As long as you live. Okay, as long as you have me, you never need to do that. I'll do all

13:51 of it for you. Okay, but kind of making sense the concept of this how I took one key and I made a blueprint of the fretboard and now it turned into five key shapes. Good so far. Okay, so that's the one chord. What do we do for like the other chords of the song? Right, here's what we do. Now, the majority of worship music is I found the other pick. It was in [laughter] it was in my The majority of chords in worship music is 1 1456. This is coming from our Nashville number system. Basically, if I was in the key of C, my one is C. My two would be a D minor. My three would be an E minor. My four is F major. My five is G major. My six is A minor. My seven would be B diminished.

14:39 Very good. Now, and we're there. The natural number system is a formula. It's a very simple formula. I'll show it to you here at the end. The national number system formula is the roots of the chords, which are the note names of the chords. Like C major chord, the root is C. F# minor, the root is F#. The roots of the chords are the notes of the keys major scale. The quality, which means major or minor, is the pattern 145 is major. 236 is minor. Okay? You won't really ever need to use the diminish chord in worship music, but the chords probably 90% of the time that we see is 1 1456. Okay? So, I'm going to show you the 1456 chords for all of our open keys, which are the five key shapes. I'm going to do all of these without the capo, then show you how you can apply it

15:25 with the capo. Everything I'm doing is done in tablete and uh the core diagrams in the experience conference resource bundle. Make sure you download that. It's just the QR code there and you hit the button and you you got it. Okay. So, I'm going to go through the five open key shapes. What were the five open key shapes? >> Caged. Very good. People call me Caitlyn the caged queen casiano. And it sounds it just there's a ring to it. So, we're going to do this for the key shape of C first. My one chord of C would be my four chord of C would be >> good. My five chord. >> Good. My six chord. >> A minor. Very good. So, what I'm going to show you here is just some ways you can make it a little more worship uh

16:12 worshipful. I guess it will cut through. It'll sit in the mix better. It'll cut through a little bit better when you need it to. It will also allow you to utilize open strings. So, when we're playing chords on the guitar, um the the rhythm guitar, especially if I am on acoustic guitar, I don't like using bar chords. Not because I can't play bar chords. I obviously can do all of that. I can play the bar chords, but I want to utilize open strings so that the intonation stays better. I don't care how great of a guitar player you are, your finger doesn't look exactly like a capo. So, there's going to be parts of it where it will press a little bit harder than other strings. and the intonation or like the tuning of where the finger is on the string is a little sharp or flat. Another reason why I like utilizing the open strings is because

16:57 you can have consistency in the voices. When we have chord being played on the guitar, we have multiple strings. Those are what we call voices. Each of those notes are voices and they're lining up like a choir. Okay? Or like singers. Um you want to kind of think about your guitar as a choir of singers. at least six singers or how many strings you're using. We want to have consistency in those voices. So, if we are utilizing open strings, those open strings are ringing out and it seems like it's more um it's it's better blended and it's going to sit in the mix a little bit better. Okay? So, for example, an F chord, G chord, A minor. If you close your eyes and you visualize

17:44 these chords, it gets a little herkyjerky. [music] It doesn't sound like it's uh there's a consistent blending like you're we're wanting like a tapestry of notes for all of those things. So, that's one thing one reason why we want to utilize the open strings. Something else that we can find with the voicings that I'm going to show you is efficiency and direction. We don't want that herkyjerky movement. We also want direction where it's moving toward. Think about this. Music is communication. If I'm going to be music is communication, music is a language. If I'm going to be talking to you, why would I start the sentence here, then I'm going to turn over here, and then I'm going to go around here. That's what that's what that is. That that is not giving us a direct hit of what I'm

18:29 trying to communicate as a guitar player. So, we want a an a consistency of the voices, making this tapestry of notes for our chord progression. And we want that beautiful blending to also have efficiency in movement and direction. Okay? Because again, this is a language. This is what I do. I teach people how to speak the language of music on the guitar. Not just here are your chords, here's the song, play it. None of that regurgitation stuff with me. Okay? So, instead of the F chord being played like this, I actually play a C suspended chord. And that allows me to utilize the open G string and the open E string from the chord before. it will still function. This is where I'll post something like this on Instagram and I'll have the pedantic men tell me it's not a real F chord. I know

19:15 it's not a real F chord, but if I have a bass player playing an F, I do not need to play the F in the bass. Okay? I also you need to understand as a guitar player, you can do whatever you want to the chord. You can add any note to the chord as long as you are not changing the quality of the chord from major to minor. and you are not changing the harmonic function of the chord. If it's still if it's an F chord and it's supposed to function as a four, if it still functions as a four and it works, you can do whatever the heck you want. Okay, you I So, that's all I'll say about that. Okay, let's talk about the five chord of G. [music]

20:00 I'm going to actually do exactly what I did for the F chord, but bump it up by two frets. This is technically coming from the G chord in the E shape, but I open up the G string and the E string. It will still function like a G chord. This is the Phil Wickham G chord. This is where I I drove to Tallahassee to see Phil Wickham when I was like 17 years old to see what chord he used on your Beautiful. And it was like before you he had any of the videos on YouTube. I drove to see him. Sat in the front row. I waited like three hours outside to see what his voicing was. This is I'm telling you guys, you if you have to be hungry to find and search for these answers on your own. Don't just Google it. Don't just go through AI. You have to be hungry to really see it. Learning is a sacred process. Here's the G. Now,

20:47 for the A minor, I'm going to bump this up by two frets and bring the index finger directionally up by one string. [music] Now, I'm adding some color tones here. It's fine. You don't have to use all of these, but maybe choose one or two that you like. But listen to the consistency in the voices, the ringing out, the tapestry of notes that we're making for this chord progression, the efficiency and the direction [music] sounds a little better than [music] and that can work in certain situations, but for worship, it's a little bit different. Okay. So, makes sense so far for the key shape of C. This can be utilized with the cable as well, and I'll show you that here in a little bit.

21:34 Now, for the key shape of A, what's our one chord of A? >> Good. What's our four chord? D. What's our five chord? What's our six chord? Great. So, one chord of A, four chord of D, five chord of E, six chord of F sharp minor. We're going to remove the bars and make this more efficient. What I like to do for the one chord of A is actually play an A suspended two where I remove the my ring finger. For the D chord, I also like removing my middle finger to create a suspended two. For the E chord, I really keep that as normal. Then for the F sharp minor, what I will do is I'll remove the bar and place the index finger on the note A of the G string, the second fret of the G string.

22:19 You can mute the low E string. So now we've got 1 4 [music] 5 then minor 6. So really nice. You see those consistency of voices as well there. Okay. Now for the key shape of G. What's our one one chord? What's our four chord? What's our five chord? And what's our six chord? Now, what I like to do for some of these, like for the E minor, I do keep my ring finger down there and the pinky to like create more consistency, but you still get the herkyjerkiness of it, right? [music] So, what we're going to do here is I'm going to start with a G chord any way you want it. You could do a C9 is nice. You could also do a C.

23:06 And then for the five chord though of D, I'm going to bump the C shape up two frets. This is more of a popular one. And then for the E minor, I'm going to bump this up by two frets and move the index finger to the fifth fret of the D string. And you can put the fifth there or you can have the open string. So now it's a really beautiful way to voice those. Now for the key shape of E. Some guitar players don't like playing in the key of E because our one is E, our four is A, but our five is B, our six is >> C sharp minor. Okay, so again, no bar chords for this class. We we we don't

23:51 need to ever play a bar chord if we don't want to. So my one of E, my four of A, my five of B, my six of C sharp minor. We're going to take those bar chords out and we're going to make this really beautiful. There are I'll show you the way. There's two voicings on the PDF that I'm giving you guys. I'm going to show you the way I would recommend it. The one chord of E. I've got open. I've got index on the second fret. I've got middle on the second fret. Then pinky on the fourth fret. Then open and open. If anybody's seen the documentary It Might Get Loud. Okay. There's a scene where the Edge is standing by his locker like from their high school and he strums the E chord [music] and he's like, I was playing E like this and then I started playing E like this and it created like the U2 sound. that that's the chord he's playing in that. If you've never seen that movie, I highly

24:36 recommend it. It's great. Um, if you are in the worship guitar space and you've never like studied the edge, you should be doing that before you study anybody of this this generation. Okay? Um, if you want to start sounding because right now everything sounds the same. I'll talk more about this in my lead guitar class, but everything in worship sounds the same. I don't care what it is. It's all very the same. Okay? If you want to start sounding different, start listening to people that are dead. Okay? I mean, I know the edge is not dead, but start listening to people who are no longer here and they're not posting on social media. They're not on YouTube. If you want to start being an like someone who's actually influencing things, find

25:22 things that cannot be talked about right now. So, go backwards. We're always thinking, I got to go forward. I got to go forward. Go backwards. Okay? I do not listen to anything of this generation. I don't I don't like all the songs yesterday. I didn't know any of them. I knew the blood. I knew the blood. Okay. So, start thinking backwards. The A chord, we're going to just take the index finger and move it down by one string. And then for the B chord, I'm going to put the index finger back up and put the ring finger on this uh the fourth fret of the G string or the D string. And then for the C# sharp minor, I'm going to basically invert the Yeah, switch those the ring and the index.

26:08 So I've got my one, four [music] chord, five chord, six chord. These are the reckless love voicings. Okay, they sound beautiful with the capo. So, the next time you're in the key of F and you're like, I don't know what to do in the key of F, do capo one and play it like that. Okay, again, I'll show you the capo chart in a second. The last key shape we have is the key shape of D. What's our one chord of D? What's our four chord? G. What's our five chord? A. What's our six chord? B minor. Very good. We're going to take the dreaded B minor bar away. Okay, I know people are excited for that. So the one chord of D, I like taking the middle finger off and playing a Dsus 4 Dsus 2.

26:53 And then for the the four chord of G, I'd like just popping the middle finger now on the low E string, third fret, which is the note G. [music] The five chord of A, I basically play an A sus 4. Notice the ring finger stayed there, the third fret of the B string the whole time, right? That note D, which is our tonic, right? And then for the B minor, I just put the index finger directionally up by one string. That's now my B minor. So I've got my [music] 1 4 5 6. [music] And if you need a D over F sharp, if I want to do an E minor as well, you've got that. Okay. So somebody tell me a key that you just hate seeing on

27:39 Planning Center. >> G flat. >> G flat. Thanks for calling it G flat, not F#. I appreciate that. Love it. We should never think an F# because why do we want to think an E sharp diminished? Ear is F. So, we're G G flatting it today. So, the first step is either look at the capo chart that I have, which I'm going to show you in just a second. Well, longer than a second in a few minutes. Or you could find the cage blueprint for the key of G flat. To find the cage blueprint for the key of G flat, I need to find the five connected cage system shapes of the Gflat chord. You do not need to do this if you've got your capo chart. So, we've got G flat in the C shape. And now the the way that I did find this, I have my C shape and I move it up

28:25 so the root note is on G flat. Okay? Or F sharp. But I've got G flat in the C shape. Go to my furthest fret, place the bar down for G flat in the A shape. I go to the furthest fret, place the bar down for G flat in the G shape. I go to the furthest fret, place the bar down for G flat and the E shape, but that's a little too far. So, if you go past the 12th fret, here's what you can do. Anytime you have a cage system shape that is on or past the 12th fret, you're going to take the fret number that your bar is on and subtract it by 12. This is on 14. 14 - 12 is two. Take this down to fret two. G flat in the [music] E shape there. Now, we're going to continue this cycle of furthest fret, bar down for G flat in the D shape. Now, remember that kind of crazy thing that I said when you're connecting from the D shape to the C shape, you're completing the cycle. Instead of the furthest fret, I

29:11 go back by one fret. And now the bar down for G flat and the C shape, I finish where I started. So for if the key for the key of G flat, here are my options. And notice I'm starting with the C shape. We always want to think cycle of C A G E D. Okay, for G flat, I can do capo 6. Play it as if it's in C. Capo 6, key shape of C. Capo 9 key shape of A. Capo 11 key shape of G. Getting a little high. Capo 2 key shape of E. Capo 4 key shape of D. Now I've got my capo locations. Again, the capo chart has this, but I want to show you how you can do it without it. So let's try this out. Let's do a 1456 chord progression in the key of G flat. Using the capo, I'm going to do capo 6 key shape of C. 1

29:57 4 [singing] 5 6 and now you could do a normal A minor if you want there. Right? Normal G, normal A minor. If it's a little too high, then I'm going to do Capo 9. Capo 9 key shape of A. Getting a little high here. Now Capo 11. This is a little high, but I just want to show you it can be done. G, C, D, E minor. Even if I was doing the normal voicings, [music] might be a little high there. Unless you need a mandolin, you might not need it. So, now we're going to do capo 2 key shape of E. 1 4 [music]

30:44 5. That's probably what I would do. Then six. [music] And then the final one was capo four. Key shape of D. 1 4 [music] 5 6. No bar chords. And the key that probably was making us sweat, key of G flat. We were freaking out. We don't have to freak out, right? Not at all. Super easy. And now you don't even need to do what I was doing because you got the capo chart. So now you should be able to play anything you need to in any key. And you don't need to use any bar cords. And this sounds better than what if we were using bar chords, right? So, do we feel pretty secure with this right now? I'm not a mom. I'm actually very single

31:30 at the moment looking. [laughter] So, if anybody knows a good godly man that can keep up with this, let me know. But I'm not a mom, but I I tell my students I'm guitar mom. So, my like my number one thing is I want everybody to feel secure in what they're doing. They're not confused. And I truly believe if you are learning music and you're learning the guitar, if you're ever taking a guitar lesson and something is confusing, it's not been taught right. It is not on you. Okay? If I ever have a student who's confused, it's my fault. Because music is a language created by God. And God is a God of order, not a God of chaos. And when music is taught the correct way, you will have a greater revelation of God as a God of order and God as a creator. There is a divine order and a

32:16 divine nature to the language of music and there should never be anything confusing in it. So that paired with me just being guitar mom, I want to make sure we all feel secure in this. So if you go on Planning Center and you have a song in the key of G flat, you're not freaking out, right? We should never have to freak out when we're playing worship, right? We there should never be stress. There should never be any freakouts. We should all feel secure in what we're doing. Okay. Good.