Video Lesson: How to Use a Capo to Play Music in All 12 Keys

The capo is a small but powerful tool for guitarists that raises the notes of the open strings but retains the individual relationships between strings. Here's how to use one.

The capo is a small but powerful tool for guitarists that raises the notes of the open strings but retains the individual relationships between strings. Here's how to use one.

Join Happy Traum, Jane Miller, Jess Baron, and Sean McGowan for an uplifting roundtable on teaching (and learning) guitar.
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“What is good tone? That’s a very good question, but difficult to answer succinctly,” says songwriter and record producer John Leventhal, known for his work with Rosanne Cash, William Bell, and other top artists. “It’s heartfelt and musical. It’s generally…

Learn Travis picking, a style of fingerpicking characterized by a steady alternating bass that underscores rhythmic patterns and melodies on the treble strings.

If you have spent any amount of time exploring the world of fingerstyle guitar, you no doubt have heard of Travis picking. (For a refresher, see “The Nuts and Bolts of Travis Picking”) Named after the country-and-western guitarist Merle Travis, it’s…
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This Weekly Workout is intended to give you some new ways to practice and to set your own path as a fingerstyle player.

Mixing up genres without pretension,” Jazz Times opined of Portland, Oregon, fingerstylist and composer Jamie Stillway, “the nimble Stillway moves freely with wit and creative restlessness.” Since moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2002, Stillway has recorded three self-produced albums,…

Jamie Stillway stopped by the Acoustic Guitar booth at NAMM 2016 to perform an instrumental on her Santa Cruz OM/PW guitar. Using a Shubb capo at the fourth fret, the guitarist played her song “The People’s Key of B,” from her album with…