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Why Are You Making the Guitar SO Hard? (transcript)
My friend, have you ever found yourself playing a song where all the chords were hard to play and then in another song all the chords were easy? Well you aren't alone, and anyone who's been playing for a while has run into this. I too have found myself in this situation. In fact, even though growing up I had several teachers and practiced a ton, for my first few years of playing I never knew what I'm about to show you. But once I did know it, and I applied it, it absolutely changed everything. So let me show you this one secret that made playing those hard songs- super easy.
Alright friends are you ready for the secret? Here it is... get ready... get ready... Oh this is not it, but understanding how to properly use this to take any song in any key and convert it into chords that you know and love that are under your fingers already is an absolute game changer! Ok now I'm going to show you just how to do that. Now I grew up playing rock and blues and classical and never used the capo before. In fact a lot of rockers would say things like using a capo is a crutch, and if this is you listen up, because nothing could be further from the truth! I'm not talking about you know going on ultimate guitar and reading- oh ok "capo 3" I know how to use a capo! What's Erich talking about in the whole video? Talk about using a capo- put the capo right there. I know how to do that! I'm not talking about that. Anybody can do that. Alright check this out.
Now I had been playing guitar for about six years, then playing in bands in the studio, all the rest, when I moved to Nashville. Okay so I'd been playing for six years, moved to Nashville, and what I discovered was that many amazing players were using Capo's, and not just on the acoustic guitar. I'm talking live and studio players alike. I'm talking about the upper echelon of players we're using a capo. So any rockers or any mediocre players that were telling me that using a capo was for hacks and people that couldn't play, and these guys were amazing players in the studio playing circles around these people that were saying that Capo's are for hacks. Who am I gonna listen to? Okay so once I realized the reason for this and I got out of that mentality, I said to myself Erich why are you making the guitar so hard?
Now before you can understand this check this out- the piano and the guitar are easiest play in the keys of C major, in G major, or their relative minor keys of A minor and E minor. So for instance, when you're playing the piano all the keys are the key of c-major or if the F is sharped then you're playing in the key of G. So one black key. All the rest are white so a lot of people like to keep their songs in the key of C or G on the piano because it's all the white keys it's a lot easier to then to memorize the Black Keys as well so and the guitar is the same way. If you keep everything in the in the key of C or G so if you're a piano player though you're gonna need to learn all the major and minor chords and the scales in all twelve keys, and every single scale, every single chord, is gonna gonna feel different.
Okay but that's just to play the basic chords by the way, but the guitar is different in this way. In fact anything that you do in the open position- you can do further up the neck right. This is how we use our capo. Now, have you ever noticed that if you're in the key of C or G that most of the chords are easy? Like C, G, D, or D minor, E minor, and A minor. Most of those are what I call the "9 essential chords" or they're in the subset of 9 essential chords, which I teach in all my courses and in fact I'm gonna provide you a link which will get you free access to one of those courses in the description of this video.
Now these chords allow you to play thousands of songs without having to learn new chord forms if you know this trick that I'm going to show you. But, have you ever played a song in the key of G sharp, or C sharp, or B flat and didn't use a capo? Friends it's not fun. Okay and the reason those rockers you know that I told you about earlier said that using a capo as a crutch is because most rock songs are actually written in open keys like E, A, C, and G where you have a lot of those easy chords and they didn't have to use the capo because the songs weren't written in those keys, but had we written those songs, or one of those songs, written in those sharp or flatted keys they would be lost and then they would be crying and then they'd be wishing for a capo! Alright, but if I told you that you could put every single song in the feel of C or G would you would you like that? Would that help?
Well first off you probably say what do you mean by the "feel of C or G"? Well let me show you. Now have you ever followed a chord lyric sheet and it says "capo 1" and then you follow the chords G, C, and D for example? Well if you told the other melodic instruments in your band- right the other players in your band to play to play G, C, and D over that it would sound absolutely terrible because everything would be a half-step off. Okay so even though it feels like a G, and it feels like a C, and it feels like a D, you telling the other instruments hey this is a G, C, and D is gonna sound terrible. Everything's gonna be a half-step off but it still feels that way to you right? So in that case we're not actually playing in the key of G, we would actually be playing in the key of G sharp, but as guitar players we don't think like that right? We just capo 1 and we say G, C, and D. So if you've ever done this before then you're halfway there but the other half of this equation, and what is the main part of this lesson, and now that you have a grasp of what we just did right? This is gonna show you how it's gonna make things a lot easier for you, but we have to do it in Reverse.. which is where most players get scared and bail out. Alright so don't do this because literally don't bail out because right now you're going to be getting some information that's gonna absolutely change the way you think about the guitar. Okay most players think that you need some sort of calculus to do this but in fact it's easy if you know how, and in fact the capo key chart that you'll be seeing here in this video and plus an article on the subject that will further clarify this for you will be provided to you for free with a link that you'll find in the description of this video. Ok I really want you guys to get this so that said you eventually won't need that chart that I'm giving you but you can use it to check your work and that sort of thing ok?
Alright so now I have two examples for you. I literally could pull out a thousand song examples but I'm just gonna pick two for you right now. Maybe I'll even pick out a song that doesn't exist and will just give me an example here. Okay so I'm gonna do these so you can see what I mean here in real in real time, in real world. Now even though G and C are our easiest keys, they may not necessarily be the keys that you convert the these two we could convert everything to the key of C or G, but in some cases you may convert them to a or E or D. Okay so the first example here is a song called "feel'n alright". It was made famous by Joe Cocker, lots of folks did it, but the song consists of a C7 and an F7. So here's a C7 and here's an F7. C7 - F7 - Okay and so for some of you you're like okay well I can play those. Those are super easy and some of you are like why I can't play bar chords and I definitely can't play it at seven bar and in that case you might say wow Erich told me that trick to stop making the guitar so hard, and I could make things a lot easier by just using the capo. So the song is in C. So this is a great way to start thinking about how to use your capo. You can use music theory or you could just use some patterns, which is music theory by the way, but in this case here the first chord is a C- so if I take my capo when I put it down on the bass note of that C, since that's my tonic, then this is a great starter. So now instead of playing that C7 form, my bass note is what I would think of as a guitar player is an A right? There's an A chord as an A string, E string, A string here right? So here's my A chord. So instead of an A I'm gonna play an A7, but realistically I'm not playing an A7 because I'm Capo'd up at the 3rd fret. You know I'm basically going up three half steps. Okay so I could think about it like this is my C chord right and now that I'm capo in one, two, three now I could think about it going hat three half steps down to A and that's gonna be my same form. Okay now the other cord was an F7 and here's an F, here's an F, so really if I was capo in that would be a D. Whereas I would think about it as a D as a guitar player. So an A and a D. So I take I would say a D7 min so now an A7.... As opposed to okay, so that just gives you a little example there you can use music theory to do this or again you can use the patterns.
Let's take another example, and using the Capo chart there you're gonna see. You know the 1, the 4, the 5 and the minor 6. Those chords are the chords that appear most in pop and rock and country and blues tunes, so get used to this chords. Those are the ones we really want to try to keep in those open keys. More than the others. All rights so let me show you another example. ere so this is "Achy Breaky Heart". It's not my favorite song in the world either, so we're in this together, but it's a great example. So the way a lot of people play this is they'll think of G and D. The G and D, but the song is capo'd at the 2nd fret so realistically what's happening is we're playing in an A chord and an E chord. Okay so there's a few different ways that we could do this we could take that a and if we find it on the low E string then we take that a and now that becomes our what it was our G chord. Instead of the open E.
So another example here, what I'm going to give you here, is that if if you ever run into say something with A cord that looks like this and and another way you think about it is if you see A flat chord or A sharp cord, you know you see an F sharp, or if you see a B flat, or you see an A sharp or a G flat or a D sharp or D flat, what that's indicating to you, especially if it's the root or the key of the song, and that's probably a place where you're gonna want to apply the capo to make it to where you have all of these open chords. Okay so for instance the songs in the key of C sharp- indicate in that case we'd have a C sharp, a G sharp, and an F sharp. So there's three sharp chords. So we wanted to make this easier we would capo the 1st fret so that we have that nice C there, that G, and here we do have a bar. When sometimes you're going to run into that but you want to try to keep most of the chords if you can in the open position. Now with that being said, if I said if I want to keep them all open I could technically take my C sharp and find it on the low E string right there and then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna act like that's my G chord well in order for me to play the G chord right here, the nut would have to be right here. Okay so meaning the capo would have to be right here. How did I figure that out? Think about it- if you want to play a G chord, and you have one space, and then the nut then if I'm playing all the way up here- Then there needs to be a space, and then the nut, or in this case the capo so I'm gonna put the capo right there. Now that song that was in c-sharp, is still in c-sharp but now I can use all open chords instead of three Barre chords that were miserable to play. So now I'm playing a G, C, and a D. What feels like the key of G, which feels like a G, feels like a C, feels like a D, but in reality it's not. In reality it's a c-sharp, a F sharp, and a G sharp. How about that? Right? Makes things easier.
So literally my friends, you can do this with any song. Now you may end up having to capo a little bit further but the way you want to think about it is. Here's the only thing you have to do is you need to find what the key of the song is, and either place it on the sixth string or the fifth string depending on what feel you want to play in. So if you want to play in the feel of C, then you'll want to make sure that your key that you're finding the bass note on the A string. If you want it to feel like it's in the key of G, then you just find the key on the low E string. So for instance, I'm just gonna pull one out of the air. I said A flat don't when to play in the key of A flat then I just need to find A flat on the low E string. So I'm gonna say e f-sharp, G g-sharp, or A flat. The same thing, and then I'm gonna grab the chord right? Well we know that there needs to be a space here in between the nut and our chord, so if I'm here, here's my space. That's where I'm gonna put the capo. It's that easy. Don't overthink this. It's that easy. Okay same thing- if the song was in the key of G sharp, and I wanted to play it in the C position, then I'm gonna find a G sharp on the the A string okay? and the G sharp is gonna be way up high because it's would be a half step below the A so I'm gonna go all the way up here and that is my g-sharp, so literally if I held the cord like that normally our nut would be right here. right? It's right behind the first finger, so I find the g sharp which is right there, and then my capo would go right there, and that's the only thing I need to think about and using your Capo chart there that I've given you. Your one, four, five would be a C and G. Now friends don't overthink this. Watch this latter part of this video a few times more, try this with a few songs because even though you may get the concept right now, okay if you don't practice it you're not it's not going to become part of you. Just getting it is half of the battle. You have to practice this or it's not gonna work for you...
