For many players, if they’ve seen one capo they’ve seen ‘em all. But they likely haven’t seen anything like Kyser’s Quick-Change Short-Cut and Quick-Change Drop D capos. As Guitar World Tech Editor Paul Riario states in the above demo video, “These are not your ordinary capos.”
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00:00 What's up? Paul here from Guitar World and today we're going to be checking out a couple of unique
00:03 capos from the king of capos, Kaiser. Yes, these are not your ordinary capos. It's the Kaiser
00:11 Quick Change Shortcut Capo and the Quick Change Drop D Capo. Let's check it out.
00:26 Both the Kaiser Shortcut and Drop D Capos offer great ways to find creative chord voicings
00:31 or if you need to capo alternate variations of similar chords. I love Kaiser capos. I use them
00:37 and in this video I'm going to show you just a few examples on how to use each in familiar ways.
00:43 The Shortcut Capo works with acoustic guitars or electric guitars and is designed to capo three of
00:50 the six strings on a guitar. The fifth string, the fourth string, and the third string, otherwise
00:56 known as the A string, the D string, and G string. And as you can see, the other three strings are
01:02 free and don't go through the capo. So when capoed on the second fret, the shortcut emulates what is
01:08 known as dad-gad tuning. And when capoed on other frets, the shortcut turns the guitar into an open
01:15 tuned instrument. You can hear all the colorful voicings as you strum or play fingerstyle up and
01:21 down the entire fretboard. What I really love about the Kaiser Shortcut Capo is that I don't
01:28 have to retune if I want to do that dad-gad type of tuning. Simply just put the capo on the second
01:34 fret and you pretty much have that sound and start droning away.
01:39 [Music]
02:09 So with the shortcut capo, you can see all the different possibilities like, you know,
02:13 having this open and these two open. And then of course I'm capoed here on the second fret
02:19 with the B and E and A. I can do a lot of different, you know, kind of inversions. So I can go
02:24 get this kind of really great sound. I can even go behind the capo and, you know, and hit the
02:34 bass note of it as well. [Music]
02:47 And of course having that possibility of these notes being held, I can use this to kind of drone
02:55 out other strings while I'm able to hit these notes, adding a real nice, you know, colorful
03:01 texture like something like this. [Music]
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03:40 So moving it up to the fourth fret with the shortcut, I can also keep the bass note and
03:44 the ringing strings and also create some colorful tones as well as having that
03:50 low bass note kind of drone through. So here we go. [Music]
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04:28 Also another cool thing that you can do is take the shortcut capo and invert it. So basically I'm
04:35 borrowing the, on the second fret, the C sharp, the A and the E. So now I have the two bass strings,
04:45 the E and the A open as well as the open E. So with that you can get, of course, like a different
04:51 type of color as well. Also like it almost sounds like an alternate tuning. So let's hear what that
04:57 sounds like. Here we go. [Music]
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05:51 The Drop D capo works with acoustic guitars or electric guitars as well and is designed to capo
05:56 five of the six strings on a guitar. Only the sixth string, the E string, remains open. When
06:02 the Drop D is capoed, it allows the guitar to emulate a Drop D tuning on the second fret,
06:07 which I have here. So you can do the familiar cowboy chords or create experimental shapes.
06:12 So similar to the shortcut capo, again I can do some interesting variations on chords and,
06:18 of course, play behind the nut as well while I'm borrowing and keeping that low E open like this.
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07:01 Also with the Drop D capo, you can also move up to like say the seventh fret and then use sort of
07:07 the low E as sort of your moving bass note and then watch the different inversions you can do
07:14 here like this. [Music]
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08:41 Also the same thing with the Drop D, you can invert it, turn it upside down like I did,
08:46 and then use the E as your drone and now you have the whole
08:49 second fret barred where you can have fun with it like this.
08:53 [Music]
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09:47 Both the Kaiser Quick Change, Shortcut, and Drop D capos are avant-garde capos that open up a
09:53 world of creative possibilities. These capos work on any fret in standard or inverted positions
09:59 and alternate tunings. The only thing you need to bring with you besides these Kaiser capos
10:04 is your imagination. Definitely check it out.
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