Geoff's Guitar Chords

"Light The Ignition of Transposition..."

Jordan Warford here, Editorial Manager for Guitar Tips.

Every so often, we decide to dive into a new aspect of playing guitar that many are either afraid of, or just simply have no idea what it's all about. Today, we're going to tackle one of the more feared issues evolving around guitar... Transposition.

Join us as we teach you the most simplistic and easy ways to transpose your music.

In this edition:

With transposition in the spotlight this week, we're also going to show you some handy sites that will give you some very quick transpositions in addition to some software programs that can help you transpose larger scores of music.

That may seem like a lot of information because it is! To deal with all of that information and give you a great foundation, we will be looking at this over the next two issues. In this issue we'll take a look at the capo and what that is all about. In our next issue we'll look at the theory of it all, as well as special tunings you can try!

As always, we have a great feedback booth for you this week. See what all of the buzz is with your fellow subscribers. Speaking of buzz, we have another exciting thing happening around our offices this week. The launch of yet another site! Yes, that's right, we're offering yet another site and this one is totally free.

We have developed a site called www.guitarforum.com.au and it's designed for you to talk to your fellow subscribers and ask the questions you always wanted to ask. We'll tell you why we put it there and how you can get involved.

With all of that in mind, let's get right to it!

Getting That Riff In Your Favorite Key!

Where to get started.

How many times have we composed a riff that we absolutely love, or perhaps found a song that we really enjoy playing and wanted to put it into a new, original song and truly make it ours? Chances are that we've all wanted to at least try it out once or twice but always came across one roadblock... Keys.

As mentioned in our last article, the probability that two riffs will be in the same key is very low if you are writing a lot of songs or wish to link two well known songs together. This is where you need to transpose one of those riffs so you can connect them together and put them in that song.

Another scenario is that you just wrote an awesome riff that you envision going into one of your band's songs... The only problem is that it's in the wrong key! With transposing, you can still use that riff and play along with the rest of the band.

If you're a true band nerd, like myself, you have probably been around transposition since the days of Jr. High or Middle School. Now, if you're still like me, you didn't have two clicks on how to do it either. I was always amazed to see how my teacher would take a trumpet part and transpose it so I could play it on my sax and still be in the right key!

With guitar, this is invaluable. You can take a sax part and transpose it to your guitar. If you happen to have a sax player around, you can now play along with that sax and still be in the proper key.

One of the most unique things about playing guitar is that we have a number of tools available to us to use for easy transposition. Many other musicians envy us for this and call us cheaters in the game of music theory, however, if you can use it... Why not?

The tools that you can use.

One of the most common tools used to transpose music on the guitar is the capo. The capo is essentially a piece of rubber that is glued onto two pieces of metal with a spring placed in between. When clasped onto the neck of your guitar and placed behind a fret, it acts as a new nut (AKA the "zero" nut.) This new nut raises the pitch of your guitar, therefore changing the key.

Most guitarists use them so they can make really complicated chords into easy open chord shapes. This is where the whole joke about cheating comes in. Instead of actually practicing those really hard chords and getting your technique down, you can transpose that chord using the capo and turn it into an open chord shape such as an E Major or an A and still have the same chord.

While I don't recommend that you always do that because it's always good to know how to play a song if your capo breaks, it's great for live performances where you want to minimize the risk of messing up a complicated chord. If you're a lead guitarist, you can still use a capo but in all honesty, it's far easier to find the key that everyone else is playing in relative to the capo and just use the scale that suites the song best.

In most cases, it's actually quicker for a lead guitarist not to use a capo and just find a scale. Switching a capo around the neck of your guitar can cost valuable seconds between songs.

So enough talk, you want to know how this works, right? Ok, lets start by looking at the chart below:

 

...So lets put this chart into practice. Suppose you are playing a song in the key of A and the chords that you are playing are A, D, and F#. The problem is, you want to play along with the rest of your band and they are playing in the key of B. Simply look at your chart and find the A chord, which is in the first column. Then look to see what capo number B falls under. In this case, it's fret number 2, so you place your capo on number two.

Continue to play the same chord shapes as you were before. The difference this time is that A, D and F# have now turned into B, E, and G#. You have just transposed a chord progression!

If you're unsure of where to start so you can transpose those chords, follow these quick steps:

1. Find what key you are currently in.
2. Use that note (for example A) to locate your position on the chart.
3. Then move over to the right and find the note of the key you are looking for (ex. B.)
4. Take a look at what fret number that note falls under and place your capo there.

Now that we know how to use the capo to transpose, there are a few techniques to get the best tone while using a capo. Looking past its theoretical use... The capo is not unlike your pick. There are tips on taking care of it and which ones that you should get over another, because there are differences.

First off, it would probably help you if you knew what one of these things looked like. This is one of the more popular models made by Kyser.

Photo courtesy of http://www.yourdictionary.com/images/ahd/jpg/A4capo.jpg

Most capos are in the same price range and it comes down to personal preference. Be prepared to pay around $17 USD for something that should last you a lifetime. Kyser and Shubb are the leaders in this industry and have made a product that is absolutely superb. Jim Dunlop is also on the scene with some honorable mentions but this editor recommends one capo over all of the rest... The Shubb capo.

Shubb has a unique trait that isn't found on other capos... Tension adjustment. You see, when you place something that's spring powered onto your strings, you're bound to end up pulling them sharp... And playing out of tune isn't something that we enjoy.

Shubb capos have a little knob where you can slightly release a bit of that tension and your guitar will go back into tune. You can check out Shubb capos by clicking here.

When using a capo, you want to place it inline with the fret you are putting it behind and keep it roughly a mm away from the fret (see picture above for proper reference.) Do not, I repeat, do not place a capo directly in between two frets, it's always closest to the fret in which you wish you place the capo on.

Every now and then you should place a few drops of light oil on the pivot point of the capo to keep it functioning properly.

There's a lot of newer alternatives to capos that are now on the market. There are capos especially for 12 string guitars, acoustic guitar, electric guitar, or both. However, my new favorite gadgets include capos that can give you drop D tunings and capos that only cover half of the strings... These are called partial capos. You can use them alone or with another capo.

They can give you really exotic tunings in a jiffy, without the need of a tuner and a lot of patience. It's perfect for the guitarist who writes a lot of songs with weird tunings but only has one guitar to perform on. I personally use them for the enjoyment of the beautiful sounds you can get from them.

Putting It All Together

Now that we have the tools, how about you hear what it sounds like? Here are some quick compositions that anyone can do. Notice how the sounds differ from one another depending on where the capo is placed. It's a lot of fun and I encourage you to try new chords using the capo in different locations and see what you come up with... You might just surprise yourself!

* Relative to the capo on the 5th fret.

Here's how it sounds:

*Relative to capo on the 2nd fret.

Here's how it sounds:

...You may have noticed my improv near the end of both riffs. This is my way of showing you that you can do this too and it's not that hard! Be yourself and you're bound to make music that inspires.

Site Review

Have you ever been really ticked off at me because you sent along an email that was really important to you and it took me what seemed like an eternity to answer? Perhaps you have a question that's burning inside of you but you rather not just get the opinion of some trained professional here on staff, rather, you want to know how people like yourself do those tricks.

Well, if any of the above calls your name or if you like to talk shop... Or you want to learn how to talk the language of guitar, we have the site for you. In response to the recent flood of emails and questions, we have decided to create a brand new free website that allows you to talk about guitar and connect with people around the world.

You're in the hot seat, yes that's right, I said you! This time you get to be the person who gives the advice, helps solve problems and become a member of an online community that wants you to become a better musician. If you're a leader, we want you on this forum. If you have no clue what on earth you are doing even picking up the guitar in the first place, we want you chatting it up on this forum. If you have a problem, question, or curiosity... This is the place for you. Have I stressed these point enough, ladies and gentlemen?

There are tonnes of places for you to start conversations, get technical help with any of our sites, ask guitar related questions, learn about new things happening and to give your input. You'll find plenty of links to click on that will educate you well on all of our latest sites.

If you're afraid of things getting out of hand, have no fear. The Guitar Tips staff are there for your safety and support. You can find me in and around the newsletter forum and you'll see appearances of other staff that you may have dealt with in the past with the addition of James Etheridge, the head administrator for the forum. Heck, you might even catch Chris, the owner of these sites as he goes about his busy work day.

I sincerely encourage you to get involved. We made this site to make your life easier. It's 100% free and won't cost you a cent. You can check out everything without becoming a member, but we encourage you to sign up to the forum. This isn't a membership to our site, rather a membership to our forum which is still 100% free. What can I say? We like to make things as affordable as possible.

Over the coming weeks I will be reviewing our other sites and you can see if you would like to become a paid member and enjoy the numerous benefits you will receive. However, it's always one step at a time. See if you like what we have to offer, and I guarantee, you'll love this forum.

Some of you may be thinking, "Of course he loves it, he works for them!" I assure you, if I wasn't as impressed as I am, I would have stopped writing about four paragraphs ago. When you log on and go past our front page, you're probably going to be shocked and think, "Wow, there's hardly any members and barely any posts!" This is true, there isn't much inside all of those neat forums but that's left for you to change.

You can create threads within those forums and start any topic you could ever think of. Before you know it, thousands of people with be along side of you and knowledge will be oozing with knowledge and your sides splitting from all the laughs and fun you're having.

Check it out at: www.guitarforum.com.au

Feedback Booth

The last two weeks have been relatively quite as far as comments have been concerned. However, some of you still took the initiative to send along your thoughts and we really appreciate that. Here's what some of your fellow subscribers had to say:

This comes to us from Jim:

Hello Jordan, I really appreciate and understand all of the hard work you're putting into your newsletter. I do, however, have one tiny suggestion regarding scales: it would be very helpful, I'm sure, to include a note regarding the use of the scales in soloing: ie., Gmajor scale is perfect for soloing over the I chord in the key of "G", the V chord in the key of "C", and would work over an Em chord, etc. The reason I ask is that I was very pleased to see the Eb Melodic Minor scale in your newsletter, but am confused regarding its use when, where, and in what key. Thanks, and keep up the good work, Jim Justice

Remember my challenge to you in our last newsletter? It was all about composition and I talked all about doing a key change and asked you to try it. Well, one of our subscribers did just that. Here's what Justin did and see what he has to say:

Hey! In your most recent newsletter you said if anyone could change the key down, then to email you the recording. Well, I did. Although, I'm sick right now so I wasn't playing at my peak performance (as you can tell by the mistakes I have) but the idea is there. Also, my wah-pedal squeaks, and you can hear it squeaking. I also realize that the sound quality is pretty bad but hey, I was using a little amp with a 2 dollar microphone. Plus I was using Windows Sound Recorder. But the change is around 5:30-ish (the song is 7 minutes and 10 seconds) so that's really the only time you have to actually pay attention. Oh and my little solo at the end, I was just having fun. I don't even know if it's in the right key...

Here is his recording and what he came up with... Thanks for proving me wrong! I said I've never heard one pulled of nicely, which could have been a tiny little exaggeration. Nonetheless, this was done decently and deserves recognition. Listen for the distortion and that's where the key change takes place. Pretty funky stuff. If you have something that you would like featured, send it along!

JD writes to us with this:

Thank you very much for your newsletters, I really enjoy them.

Catherine writes with this very popular question:

Sorry about the articles I seem to have misplaced them could you send them again and as soon as I get them I will placed them up on my site. I have been so absent minded lately.

Great question! Many of your have asked the same thing. If you wish to get caught up on all of our most recent newsletters, take a trip to the top of this page and find the archive tab. Click on that tab and you'll find a list of the lessons. If you wish you to download all of the lessons to your pc, go to need content. If you don't have a site, that's fine. Just place our site url in there.

 

Conclusion

Well, we have come to the part of the newsletter where we rap things up yet again. I truly hope that you feel more confident in your abilities as a musician and no matter how daunting the task of transposition may seem to you at this point in time, I encourage you to continue to try! It will be well worth it to you in the long run.

To your credit, it isn't easy picking this stuff up if you don't know a little bit about music theory. Over the coming months, we're going to show you some of the inside tricks of music theory that any guitarist can use. Next week we'll approach the subject from a different angle and also give you a brand new challenge to work on.

On another guitar related note, my apologies for the lack of video and audio in the last two newsletters. Things have been a little hectic around here as of late but I assure you that you can look forward to more video and MP3's in the near future!

Until next time, keep on picking!