Here’s a great video of John Vanderslice performing on Seattle’s Fremont Bridge. He starts his song as the bridge’s bell starts clanging, notifying boats and cars that the drawbridge is about to go up.

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.

Hi Musicians,

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:

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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…

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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…

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

PTSTWUTDWG: So what key is it in?

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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