Cheap Guitar Trick #1: Capo.

(Image from www.musiciansfriend.com)

Git'choself wunna these. The capo is the hack guitarist's best friend. It effectively shortens the guitar's neck - it means that when you play a chord it will sound higher. So what's it good for?

If you're like me, you'll love the cheap tricks on guitar - hammer on or pull off to add a 2 or a 'sus', and people think you're a whole lot more skilled than you really are.

But for hacks like you and me, we have a problem when it comes to playing in the church band. All old hymns and many contemporary-ish congregational songs (e.g. many Emu Music songs) are written by pianists. This means that when you look at the chart, you're seeing a whole lot of B-flat and E-flat: not the hack guitarist's best friend. Definitely not the acoustic guitarist's best friend.

This means the songs are harder to play, and generally sound rubbish because you are using a lot of barre chords rather than open chords. You won't be able to really let chords ring or to use many of your hard-earned tricky hammering skills you earned playing all that Ben Harper.

But do not fear! My very rudimentary knowledge of musicology is here! Most pop music uses a very limited range of chords. For example, if a song is in the key of C, the melody of that song will be based on the notes in the key of C (C, D, E, F, G, A, B, C). Most music which isn't jazz or classical will mostly use chords built on the 1st, 4th and 5th notes of that scale (i.e. C major, F major and G major). You're also likely to see what's called the relative minor - a minor chord built on the note which is 3 semitones (i.e. 3 guitar frets) below the root note of the scale (the note which the scale is named after - in this case C). So the relative minor chord in the key of C is the A-minor chord. To recap - if a song is in the key of C we're likely to see a lot of C, F, G and Am chords.

But if a song is in the key of E-flat, we'll see a lot of E-flat, A-flat, B-flat, and C-minor. None of this is too friendly for guitar. But whack a capo on the 3rd fret, and hey presto! Now you can play the song in the key of C (with lots of nice, friendly open chords) and have it sound like it's in E-flat. This means that you don't have to transpose the whole song into a different key (which is hard if you don't know what you're doing and can potentially make the song unsingable), and makes things much easier for you. It should also open your possibilities for hammer-ons and pull-offs etc. right up.

So what this means is that, no matter how nasty the key of the song, you should be able to deploy a capo and, with a tiny bit of thought, instantly find yourself in a nice guitar-friendly key like C, A, G or D. Because of the aforementioned limited chordal patterns, if you play around with capo position and try the keys you're comfortable with, you should be able to find a sweet spot where it both sounds right and is easy to play.

Pick one up - best $40 you'll ever spend.