Acoustic Guitar Techniques: How to Get a Grip on Partial Capos

If you’re drawn to the creative possibilities of alternate tunings but don’t want to completely lose your bearings on the fingerboard, a partial capo may be just the ticket. Like an alternate tuning, a partial capo changes the intervals between the open strings, enabling you to find chord voicings and melodic ideas that might not have occurred to you—or wouldn’t be possible—with standard tuning or a standard capo. And yet with a partial capo you can keep your strings in standard tuning, so that when you fret notes above the capo, everything works in the usual way. Much of what you know how to play still applies. A partial capo provides, in many ways, an ideal mix of the familiar and the unexpected.