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,
Regular tuning Western guitar, which has six strings, major-thirds tuning has a smaller range than standard tuning; on a guitar with "seven" strings, the major-thirds tuning covers the range of standard tuning on "six" strings. Even greater range is possible with guitars with "eight" strings. Major-thirds tuning was heavily used in 1964 by the American jazz-guitarist Ralph Patt to facilitate his style of improvisation. This tuning is like that of the lowest four strings in standard tuning. Consequently, of all the regular tunings, it is the closest approximation to standard tuning, and thus it best allows the transfer of a knowledge of