Why Might One Not Want To Use A Capo On A Guitar?

The following are 5 reasons why one might not want to use a capo:

Adding a device to the neck of the guitar such as a capo can get in the way of moving your hand where there would normally not be something. It is an adjustment playing with a capo for the first time. Parts of your hand will touch the capo.

If you use a capo, the overall sound of notes and chords is a little different. Some players do not like this slight difference.

Chords – The overall sound of chords will be different because of the different arrangements of notes. For example, if you were to play a G chord with the capo at the 2nd fret (which makes the G chord turn into an A chord), this would sound slightly different from playing an A chord without the capo. This is because the notes of the two A Chords are exactly same BUT the notes are rearranged.

Notes – Timbre is the character or quality of a musical sound or voice as distinct from its pitch and intensity. If you play the same not but higher, the timbre of the notes changes. For example, if you were to play the following E notes they would all sound slightly different. This is because the string that they are on produces a slightly different timbre.

Taking what we learned above, let’s say two guitar players play the same chords but with a slightly different arrangement of the notes. If one person uses a capo and one does not, the overall sound will be bigger when the two players play at the same time.

The higher you put the capo on, the lower notes on the guitar become unreachable. So the overall sound of notes and chords gets higher and higher.

Sometimes guitar players want a challenge while playing guitar. Placing a capo on can make chords easier to play. For example, let’s say a song uses basic chords with a capo on. If you were to take the capo off you would need to use harder chords such as Bar Chords for the entire song.