Changing Keys with a Capo

from: Beginning Guitar with Adrianne Serna

This lesson is part of the course Beginning Guitar with Adrianne Serna.

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Learn to play guitar from scratch and sing some of your favorite songs with simple but powerful chords and strum patterns. Includes 24 great songs to play, with chord and lyric sheets.

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Orphan Girl

Gillian Welch’s song “Orphan Girl” was first recorded by Emmylou Harris on her classic Wrecking Ball album, and Welch recorded the song, which has become a bluegrass jam session favorite, on her debut recording, Revival. You can play “Orphan Girl” with just three chords—G, C, and D—and the bass down-up strum, with or without an alternating bass, whichever you choose. Adrianne shows you which bass strings to alternate for each chord and how to accent the second and fourth beats of each measure.

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The Beginning Guitar Subscription Includes:

24 complete songs to play
Chord tutorials for 11 essential guitar chords
New strum patterns (with variations) introduced in each lesson
Advice on tuning your guitar, changing keys, using a capo, and more
Chord-and-lyric sheets with recommended strum patterns for all songs
High-quality video with multiple camera angles so you can see closeups of both hands in action.

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Changing Keys with a Capo

Suppose you sing a song in one key and your friend plays it in another. What do you do? One solution is to use a capo to change keys (also known as “transposing”). Adrianne shows you to play songs you already know in different keys by using a capo. For example, you can move a song you know in G to the key of A by putting a capo on the second fret and playing key-of-G shapes. Adrianne also explains that there is a half step (one fret) between the E and F notes and B and C notes. Between all the other natural notes there is a whole step (two frets).

Changing Keys with a Capo (Available to subscribers)

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