City and Colour - Comin Home. Please Help Me!

hi Christine and welcome to Guitar Noise

When you put a capo on your guitar, you think of whatever fret the capo is on to be your new "0" fret. So when you see these chords wirtten out like this:

|0-0-0--0--0-0*--0-0-0-0-0-0-0--0--0-0*--0-0-0-0|
|0-0-0--0--0-0*--3-3-3-0-1-1-1--1--1-1*--1-1-1-0|
|0-0-0--0--0-0*--0-0-0-0-0-0-0--0--0-0*--0-0-0-0|
|2-2-2--2--2-2*--4-4-4-0-2-2-2--2--2-2*--2-2-2-0|
|2-2-2--2--2-2*--5-5-5-0-3-3-3--3--3-3*--3-3-3-0|
|0-0-0--0--0-0*--x-x-x-0-x-x-x--x--x-x*--x-x-x-0|

The first one is Em. With the capo on, it's actually F#m, but you just play an Em using the open strings of the guitar (which are now the second fret but on the TAB they are "0") and the second fret of the D and A strings (which will really be the fourth fret of the guitar). You're playing as if your guitar has magically gotten two frets shorter.

To make the second chord (x54030), by the way, play a regular C chord and slide each finger up two frets higher on the neck. We've covered this particular chord in many lessons on Guitar Noise, the last one being the Easy Songs for Beginners lesson on Man On The Moon ( https://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/man-on-the-moon/ )

Somewhere in here is a lesson on capos, too:

https://www.guitarnoise.com/lesson/the-underappreciated-art-of-using-a-capo/

Hope this helps. Welcome once again to Guitar Noise and I look forward to seeing you around on the Forum.

Peace

Oh!

That makes so much sense, thanks so much! I'm sure I'll be around here often, posting more mishaps :roll:

Thanks again,

Christine

Didn't think I would be back so soon but...

I get the whole capo thing now, but now that I have actually tried it, I need advice on getting the strumming pattern right. I was looking on you tube to see how others played it but most of them don't show their guitar just there face. How can you tell if you need to strum up or down?

Thanks again
Christine

I think you should listen to the song (I've never heard it ) if the guitar is loud and clear then good, but it helps to find an acoustic version and listen to it, and try to get the feel, cause strumming patterns are relative, DuDuDUdU doesn't work, I have to show you what I mean by playing it, looking it in tabs doesn't work, and looking at videos and trying to find the pattern doesn't work either cause it has some kinda lag O_O.

Th best thing is listening to the song and getting the feel for it and imitate it, or give it your own twist .. ^_^

Like Coolnama said, listening.

When I'm trying to figure out the rhythm of a song, I usually just mute all the strings with my fretting hand, and strum along with the song until I randomly start hitting some of the beats.
Continue with that experiment until you start hitting more right than wrong, then until all the wrong ones are gone.
What's left should be what you are looking for.

Yeah, I know it sounds a bit haphazard, but it (mostly) works for me.

Now if only I could get my ear developed to the point where I could do the same with note pitches... :(

Well to get there you have to listen. Then you have to play. Then you have to listen at what you play. O_O

And I bet it takes time and practice.

But strumming patterns I always like to give it my twists like when I'm going for a chord change I tend to do a little DUDU maybe percussive DUDU ( Down Up Down Up ) unless its a sad song, there I usually let chords ring out more.

Everything in music is relative though ^_^.

You've got to do more than just listen, you also have to count out the beat. This is in a fairly slow beat of four and there is no one pattern that repeats throughout the whole song. That's not surprising because there almost never is despite most beginning guitarists' desire that there be one.

Because the tempo is relatively slow, you can divide the strumming into sixteenth notes (each a quarter of a beat long), which means that your "down and up" motion will be in terms of sixteenth notes. You want to go down on each half beat.

For the most part, he's got some variation of this going on:
1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
D U D U D U D U D U D U

But he varies it a lot. From a single hearing, I couldn't detect more than a handful of repetitions of this pattern. Sometimes he'd throw in a few more strums (between the second and third beats) and sometimes he'd drop a few (mostly on the third beat).

Don't be afraid to count things out. You'll rarely get the hang of strumming if you only think in terms of downs and ups.

Hope this helps.

Peace

Hi,

Thanks for all of your replies, I think I got one of the strumming patterns down, just gotta work on the melody and were all good.

Peace,
Christine