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,
Standard tuning a standardized tuning system (see page). Standard tunings in plucked string instruments cover many different instruments which are plucked either by the fingers or with a plectrum. Guitars and bass guitars have more standard tunings, depending on the number of strings an instrument has: Guitar notation is an octave above the actual note, so Middle C (C) in guitar notation is the third space on the treble clef, whereas the note written as one line below the treble clef is C. Guitars are thus normally tuned in fourths, with the exception of a major third between the 2nd and 3rd