Capo Capo A capo (short for "capodastro", "capo tasto" or "capotasto" , Italian for "head of fretboard"; Spanish: " cejilla" or "capodastro"; French: "capodastre"; German: "Kapodaster"; Portuguese: "capodastro", Serbo-Croatian: "kapodaster"; Greek: "kapotasta") is a device used on the neck of a stringed (typically fretted) instrument to shorten the playable length of the strings, hence raising the pitch. It is a common tool for players of guitars, mandolins, mandolas, banjos, ukuleles and bouzoukis. The word derives from the Italian "capotasto" which means the nut of a stringed instrument. The earliest known use of the term "capotasto" is by Giovanni Battista Doni who,
Tuning mechanisms for stringed instruments there is not space for a knob on each string, such as pianos and harps. Turning the peg tightens or loosens the string, changing the pitch produced when the string is played and thereby tuning it. A pegbox is the part of certain stringed musical instruments (violin, viola, cello, double bass, lute) that houses the tuning pegs. A tapered peg is simply a smooth peg with a string wound around it. The tension of the string is controlled by turning the peg, and the peg is held in place by friction in its hole (in contrast to tuning machines, below).