A simple, effective way to discover new sounds on the guitar is to use a capo along with 1st-position open chords, commonly referred to as “cowboy” chords.
A great example of this approach can be heard in the title track to my 2012 album, Driving Towards the Daylight, which I co-wrote with the great Danny Kortchmar. Danny is renowned for his work with James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Don Henley, Ringo Starr and many others.
In truth, this was a song that I had forgotten all about. Around 15 years ago, I had a Korg multitrack machine that I was going to get rid of, but before I did, I decided to go through it to hear what had been recorded on it. I saw the title and thought, “What is that?” and when I heard it I remembered it was a song Danny and I started but never finished. I decided to finish it, and it became the title track of my next record.
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The song is played in the key of F minor, because that is the best key for my voice. But I opted to use a capo at the 1st fret and play the song as if it were in E minor. The capo allows me to play 1st-position “cowboy” chords throughout the song, along with many open-string embellishments that 1st-position chord shapes facilitate.
Stylistically, the song has a country/Americana feel. Personally, I like all kinds of music, and this song affords me the opportunity to visit that musical terrain.
Figure 1 illustrates the first four bars of the intro/verse section of the tune, wherein I play a single-note melody that connects the chord progression of Em-G-D-C. For each chord, I allow all the strings to ring together.
When it comes to soloing, there’s an old adage that you can’t do a lot of string-bending if you’re using a capo. The truth is that you can, as long as you have a good capo.
It needs to be affixed to the guitar tightly, so that when you bend and release a string, it will go back to the proper unbent position.
Figure 2 presents a nine-bar solo that moves loosely between Em and C; you can imagine a G and D chord played in bars 2 and 3, as well. This improvised solo is based primarily on the E hexatonic minor scale (E, F#, G, A, B, D) with brief use of C, C# and D#.
When using a capo, it can get a little disorienting when playing more than five frets away from it because all the fret numbers are relative to the capo. In this case, a note tabbed or visualized to be at the 9th fret is actually at the 10th.
Because we’re thinking in E minor here, I wouldn’t play country-type licks such as that shown in Figure 3, because these phrases are more suited to the key of E major.
Figure 4 is a better example of sitting firmly within the key of Em by sticking with E minor pentatonic (E, G, A, B, D) or hexatonic.
Driving Towards the Daylight is inherently a rock song with country elements, akin to the music of the Eagles, Jackson Browne and the music that came out of Laurel Canyon in the late ’60s.
And in this application, the capo helps to achieve some chordal sounds that would otherwise be unavailable.
