Capotastic!

Last night I had the chance to hear singer/songwriter Ed Smaron perform.  About halfway through his set he said, “it’s time to capo up.”  As Ed said this he fumbled around in his pocket and pulled out one of those small clamp things that gets, well clamped to the neck of the guitar to shorten the strings and raise the pitch.

“Rockstars don’t have capos in their pockets.  They have another guitar that some big guys with giant rolex hands to them,” Ed joked as he adjusted his capo for the next song.

I have seen these things hundreds of times on the end of various musicians’ guitars, but I never knew what they were called.  According to Wikipedia (my favorite source of nearly accurate information), capo is short for capotasto, which is Italian for “head of fretboard.”  This name was coined by Giovanni Battista Doni, an Italian musicologist from the 17th century.  

A bonus fun fact about G.B. Doni - he renamed the C note (the actual note not the $100 dollar bill) from Ut to Do (after his last name) in the solfege system.  Without Doni, the Von Trapp kids might have been singing “Ute a tribe, an Indian tribe”, rather than “Doe a deer”, and I would still be calling a capo that clamp thing.

If you want to hear a capo in action you can check out Ed Smaron on Facebook at Ed Smaron music or here at his ReverbNation page:

https://www.reverbnation.com/edsmaron