Every Christmas I send my family members on a trail of clues that leads them to their Christmas gift. I had so much fun making the first couple clues this year that I decided to post them on my website and see if anyone else would like to give them a shot. They’re based on Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, but really, you don’t have to be a geek to enjoy them.

I’m awarding my Franklin Mint, Limited Edition die-cast Type II Phaser (pewter with gold highlights), purchased at the 2007 Vegas convention, to the first person who solves either puzzle. Just kidding.

Christmas Clue Hunt 2007

Think long and prosper,

Rob

UPDATE 12/10: I just finished my mom’s clue, and it’s a music puzzle! Enjoy!

Allman Brothers - Melissa
Aly and AJ - Greatest Time of Year
Beatles - Revolution
Beatles - While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Beatles - Let it Be in key of G (revised)
Ben Folds - The Luckiest
Michael Buble - Everything
Colbie Caillat - Bubbly
Hank Card, et. al. - The Other Shore
Brandi Carlile - What Can I Say
Cheap Trick - Surrender
Kelly Clarkson - Walk Away
David Allan Coe - Would You Lay With Me
Elvis Costello - (What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love, and Understanding
Creedence Clearwater Revival - Susie Q
Daughtry - It’s Not Over
John Denver - Annie’s Song
Dire Straits - When It Comes to You
Steve Earle - Ft. Worth Blues
Flaming Lips - She Don’t Use Jelly
John Fogerty - Rhubarb Pie
The Fray - Over My Head (Cable Car)
Great Big Sea - Lukey
Nanci Griffith - Gulf Coast Highway
PJ Harvey - Send His Love To Me
John Hyatt - Feels Like Rain
Indigo Girls - Hey Jesus
Waylon Jennings - Slow Rollin’ Low
Jet - Move On
Jack Johnson - Wasting Time (revised)
Diana Jones - My Remembrance of You
Lucy Kaplansky - End of the Day
Lucy Kaplansky - Ten Year Night
The Kings of Mongrel Folk - Neighbor of the Beast
Tom Lehrer - Be Prepared
Curtis Mayfield - People Get Ready
Paul McCartney - Maybe I’m Amazed
Sarah McLachlan - I Will Remember You
Tom Petty - Listen to Her Heart
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb in Am (easier)
Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb in Bm (how they do it)
Plain White Ts - Hey There Delilah
Bonnie Raitt - Love Me Like a Man
Recess Monkey - The Littlest Monkey
Emma Roberts - Dummy
Rolling Stones - Honky Tonk Women (revised)
Semisonic - Closing Time (revised)
Elliott Smith - Say Yes
Bruce Springsteen - Reason to Believe (Aimee Mann cover)
Bruce Springsteen - Thunder Road
Stray Cats - Stray Cat Strut
James Taylor - You’ve Got a Friend (Carole King cover)
Thin Lizzy - The Boys are Back in Town
Traditional - There Ain’t No Bugs On Me
Gillian Welch - Look at Miss Ohio
Lucinda Williams - I Asked Him For Water He Gave Me Gasoline
Pete Yorn - Crystal Village
Dan Zanes - Sunny Side of the Street

Have fun!

I’ll be spending the holiday with my family in California. I’m excited to try a bluegrass song with them this trip, called “Devil’s Dream.” We never played music together when I was a kid, but as my sisters and I have gotten older the family’s been able to find some common ground in our skills and tastes.

Bluegrass is a real stretch, though. My mom plays violin, but never “fiddle” (a violin becomes a fiddle when your spouse is in jail and the car’s on the front lawn). And my younger sister is just getting good enough at guitar to make quick chord changes.

I’ll consider the song a success if my polka-loving dad wakes up in his rocking chair and says, “Hey, you could two-step to that!”

One thing I’ve done to make the song easier for my sister is to show her how to use a capo to avoid barre chords, which is the topic of today’s newsletter.

But first, I want to dispel two illusions about capos:

1) Using a capo to avoid difficult chord shapes is lazy

I wonder if this attitude stems from America’s puritanical work ethic. Wherever it comes from, understand that musicianship is all about efficiency–getting the best results with the least effort. Even when playing difficult passages, good musicians do whatever they can to minimize strain. This approach not only helps them avoid injury, but it also improves the music.

So if playing a song in Bb using all barre chords gets you the best sound (like when playing reggae or funk, styles that require a lot of left-hand muting), then go for it. But if you’re crooning a tender love ballad that needs smooth chord changes, save your fingers–and schnookum’s ears–and play open chords with a capo!

2) You should play songs in the capo position of the original song

Sometimes this is a good idea. Capoing some songs, like The Beatles’ “Blackbird,” is impossible without dramatically altering the guitar part (put a capo on the 5th fret, and you run out of real estate as soon as you hit the second measure). But most songs can be played equally well in a variety of capo positions.

Which key is best? If you’re singing with the guitar, choose the key that’s best for your voice. The voice is usually the most important instrument, and everything else defers to the voice’s requirements. Playing “Closer to Fine” with Capo 2 just because that’s how the Indigo Girls did it is like buying shoes in your friend’s size because you liked the way they looked on her.

Enough with the dispelling. Here’s how to avoid difficult chord shapes by using a capo. Let’s use my sister Margaret’s predicament as an example.

“Devil’s Dream” is usually played in the key of A. The chords are A, D, E, and the ever-despised Bm, a barre chord. Why it’s played in the key of A, I don’t know, but that’s how I learned the melody, and there’s no way I’m learning that fingertip-flayer using a whole new scale shape. On the other hand, you could float the Macy’s Day Parade through the pauses in Margie’s barre chord changes. Time to bust out the capo.

First, we need to choose a key that Margie can play in. Let’s use the key of G. If we transpose “Devil’s Dream” to the key of G, we get the finger-friendly chords G, C, D, and Am. For more explanation of transposing, read my three newsletter issues on chord families, starting here.

Now we need to figure out where to put the capo so that Margie will be playing those chord shapes (G, C, D, and Am), but because of the capo, will actually be playing in the key of A.

To do this, you need to know the musical alphabet. If you don’t know it, here it is, but you should memorize it. Notice that some notes (called accidentals) have two different names (divided by a “/”). Also, keep in mind the pattern starts over at the beginning once you get to G#/Ab.

A A#/Bb B C C#/Db D D#/Eb E F F#/Gb G G#/Ab

You really should memorize this. Really. There are some tricks to it, but that’s for another newsletter.

OK, so where do we put Margie’s capo? Let’s try inching up the fretboard fret-by-fret until her G chord (the I chord in the desired key) becomes an A chord (the I chord in the despised key). Well, if you put the capo on the first fret, and play a G chord shape (It’s just a chord SHAPE now, right? We’ve entered Capoland!), the chord is now a G# (or Ab) chord–one note higher in the musical alphabet.

And if you move the capo up to the second fret, now you’re playing an A chord (A is the next note in the musical alphabet after G#/Ab). So to play in the key of A using G chord shapes, capo 2.

Think of it this way: When we changed from the key of A to the key of G, we lowered the key of the song a whole step (two notes of the musical alphabet). To compensate, we need to capo 2 to raise the key back up to A.

In short, to figure out how to play a hard song using easier chord shapes but keeping the key the same, follow these four steps:

1) Choose a new key that’s easier to play in. G’s usually the easiest.

2) Fret the I chord of the new key (the I chord is the chord the key is named after).

3) Inch up the fretboard with your capo, raising the name of your chord by one note in the musical alphabet, until you reach the I chord of the original (despised) key.

4) Transpose the other chords in the song from the despised key into the desired key. You’re done!

Once you get good at this, you can do it in your head. There are other shortcuts too (experts, have at it in the comments section of the blog!), but this will get you started.

Also, note that this process might land you on Capo 10 or 11. Yow! You’d need surgical instruments to play up there. Go back to step 1 and choose a different easy key.

Incidentally, if you’d like to hear “Devil’s Dream,” there’s a cool video of some young women playing it on YouTube.

Happy Thanksgiving,

Rob

Fremont was my first home when I moved to Seattle, and that bridge is a central character in many of my memories of those first few years in a new city. I never knew it was a musician though, and it keeps such good time!

The Video

You can read more about the event here.

First of all, I’d like to welcome all the people who signed up for the newsletter recently. We’re coming up on one thousand subscribers! Holy cow!

I’ve been traveling a lot this past month, and The Heartwood Beat went into cardiac arrest as a result. Thanks for your patience.

To my amazement, several readers have been clamoring for some more music theory, so I’ve decided to dedicate this newsletter to celebrating the weird and wonderful Land of Capo. For you total beginners, the capo is a clamp you put on your fretboard that enables you to, among other things, change keys without changing chord shapes. Speaking of which, this newsletter is geared toward beginners, so the rest of you can go back to working on your fingerstyle interpretation of Van Halen’s “Eruption.”

In particular, I hope to teach you how to use a capo without getting your butt whooped. This topic occurred to me last week when one of my students recounted a conversation she had with her singing teacher. It went something like this:

**********************

Professionally-Trained Singing Teacher, Who’s Unaccustomed To Dealing With Guitarists (PTSTWUTDWG): Oh, I love “Dark as a Dungeon!” What key do you usually sing it in?

My Poor, Unsuspecting Guitar Student (MPUGS): Um…well, I do capo 4, but I play it in G.

PTSTWUTDWG: So you play it in G?

MPUGS: Yeah, but capo 4.

PTSTWUTDWG (sweat forming on her brow): So is it in G or not?

MPUGS: Well, see, I play it in G like this (puts the capo on 4th fret and strums a chord), but the capo’s on the 4th fret.

PTSTWUTDWG: That’s not a G chord (plays a G chord on the piano). THAT’s a G chord

MPUGS: Yeah, this G’s different ‘cause it’s capo 4.

Long Silence…

**********************

The problem? MPUGS was in Capo Land, where the grass is blue, the sky is green, international disputes are solved by games of checkers, and Angus Young plays french horn for the Danville Community Orchestra.

To put it more simply, the capo creates an illusion that you’re playing a certain chord, or that you’re in a certain key, but you’re not. And in order to bridge the cultural gap between the Capolese people and the Notguitaristians, you must do this simple thing:

Understand the difference between CHORDS and CHORD SHAPES.

Take the C chord. If you’re a beginning guitarist, you probably know just one way to play that chord. But this isn’t the only way to play a C chord—you could play it in dozens of different places up and down the neck. C chords, like most chords beginners learn, just require three notes—C, E, and G in this case—and combinations of these notes are found all over the place on the fretboard.

The problem is, beginners don’t think of a C chord in terms of “C, E, and G.” Instead, they picture the shape of the chord on the fretboard.

So when my poor guitar student (it was all my fault, so let’s call her My Poorly-Educated Guitar Student (MPEGS)) tried to explain to her singing teacher what key she was playing in, what she should have said was…

**********************

MPEGS: Um…well, I play it in Capo 4 using G chord shapes.

PTSTWUTDWG: So what key is it in?

**********************

And the answer to that question will be the topic of the next newsletter.

Until then, my Capolese comrades,

May all your B-flat chords have G shapes.

Rob

I wouldn’t be one to judge, but The Stranger has a reputation of being Cool. If they only knew I spent my weekends mowing my lawn in shorts, loafers, and knee-high black socks…