A song in E major has several bar chords in it. B, C#m, F#m. If bar chords still feel like work, that’s a lot of the song fighting you.
Put a capo on the 2nd fret and the same song becomes D, G, A and Bm. Capo 4 and it’s C, F, G and Am. Same pitch, and it’s easier on your hands.
That’s useful on its own, and even more so when you’re playing with someone else. Two guitars on the same shapes don’t complement each other, they just double. Put a capo on one of you and that part moves into a different register, and it starts to actually sound like two guitars.
I wrote about what a capo actually does and why you’d want one. This is the practical half of that post.
Type chords separated by spaces. Bars and dashes are fine: | Em | C | G D |
Why only these keys
Every position here puts you in C, A, G, E, D or F, or in Am, Em or Dm when the song is minor. Those are the keys with an open shape for the home chord.
Anywhere else you need a bar chord for the tonic itself, which is the thing the capo was meant to save you from. So a song in Eb doesn’t get offered to you as Eb. It gets offered as D shapes at capo 1, or C shapes at capo 3.
What the bar count measures
Grips, not transitions. Each chord is either a bar or it isn’t, and the badge adds them up.
That misses something real. Four easy chords that all move at once can be harder to play than three easy ones and a bar you already own. The number can’t see that. Your hands can.
Why the easier voicings work
Tick that box and four chords get stand-ins: B becomes B7, Bm becomes Bm7, F#m becomes F#m7, and F gets played on the top four strings instead of a full bar.
The 7ths work because they don’t change where the chord is going. B is the V chord in E, and B7 is still the V, arguably more so. Bm7 and F#m7 are the same chords with one more note in them.
That’s usually safe. But it does change the sound. A m7 is softer and more open than a bare minor triad, and if the arrangement wants the triad, you’ll hear the difference. F is the exception: the four-string version is the same chord without the low root, so it gets thinner, never different.
The planted set is a separate idea. G, Cadd9, Em7 and Dsus4 all keep your ring and pinky on the top two strings, so those two fingers never move. More fingers on each grip, less work getting between them.