Hi guys, Andy here and today we're looking at what a capo is, also known as a K-Po, if you're an American, and how to use it and just a bit of an absolute beginner's guide as to why you might want to go out and buy one of these things. Now the very inexpensive is the first thing I'd like to point out. If you can afford a guitar, you can definitely afford or your parents can afford a capo. You can get them from as little as two or three pounds, so maybe five dollars on eBay or Amazon or online or from your local guitar shop and I really recommend this trigger type it's called. So that's this type of capo where we can squeeze and easily put on and place and move this capo. Far better than any ones that might be made of cotton or far better than I've seen some people say you can put a pencil and two elastic bands. Really recommend anyone at least they're quite strong of grips so they'll really hold you strings down well and it's going to sound really good with this. So what is it first of all? Well it basically hires up the pitch of your guitar which we can also say changes the key because your, say your e-major chord for example. That's how it sounds when I play it in open position, no capo as I normally would. If I put the capo at first fret it sounds slightly higher and if I keep adjusting it, fret two, higher again and so on and so off and many guitarists kind of use it creatively to get a kind of mandarin sound which for example would be how James Blunt plays your beautiful. There's not really another way to get that kind of sound without a capo but it can be also seen if you have covered bar chords how your first finger acts when you're playing a bar chord but it doesn't always ring out quite as well with your fingers as it does with a capo because it really squashes them down really good and it kind of allows us to do other things so I'll be using this with you guys really as a beginners tool to be able to play songs that you couldn't play especially in the right key with the record and for example you would need one of these to be able to play at level one of my beginners course and the guitar.co.uk Ed Sheeran, UNI which has a capo at second fret, love me do by the Beatles I've arranged with capo at third fret and I've also capo third fret at level one I have a song called Never Can Tell by Chuck Berry which have arranged with capo also at third fret so we can play an A chord instead of the much trickier C chord which a lot of people aren't ready for yet in the first weeks of playing guitar but it still allows you to be able to play that song and a little later on you might want to use a capo when you're learning kind of blues riffs and you want to change the key so you can move it up a little bit if we're in a different key and it's a little bit higher. So it's really useful singers often use it to change the key to make the key suitable for their voice most prevalent or most obvious when a female singer is learning or singing a male vocaled song they'll alter the capo to make it suit their female range and vice versa if a guy wants to sing a girl's song they might have to alter the capo just to suit their voices as best as possible and that's something that we're going to be looking at a little later in this course as is exactly because of course we will be playing different chords these chords sound different when we use the capo now the house and wise to do that I'm going to cover later in this course so what chord for example if you're just to give you a quick example of that lesson if we play an E chord of first fret it is of course and sounds like an E major so as you can tell in tune but if we put the capo at first fret and we play the same E chord possibly to the capo it now sounds like an F chord because we've hired everything up by one fret or one nut so it's gone from an E to an F there's a little bit of background in music theory needed which isn't presumed at this level at all and as I say you're best off turning to those few songs out of my level one of my beginners course just to get a bit of practical knowledge of this as I say really recommend you and I by Ed Sheeran all of me do with it by the Beatles really they're the two that really say make sure that you take a look at that's everything for this video do check out the rest of my videos in this free beginners course subscribe if you like what I do to support me and I'm sure I'll see you again bye for now