Transposing ineffective; song has all 12 chords...?
Players of instruments who use capos: Have any of you ever come across a song that you wanted to use a capo on, but it wouldn't help because the song had all 12 chords of that quality?
Let me explain: Suppose you want to play a song on, say, guitar, but you can't play an E major chord (this is just an example). But OH NO! The song has all 12 major chords in it (C,C?,D,E?,E,F,F?,G,G?,A,B?,B), so that no matter how you put that capo on, you still have to play an E major chord shape!
Has that ever happened to any of you? If so, what was the song? Are there any little workarounds to that hypothetical situations?
I'm just curious, this never happened to me.
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Even if a song has a large variety of chords in, some will most likely be more important than others. One chord shape might be one that you have to riff on for an extended period of time, perhaps moving your fingers to different suspensions or alterations; another might be one that you have to just play quickly as a passing chord. So you can set the capo such that the important chords are the easier ones to play. Any less important chords can be played in a reduced form, perhaps over just 3 or 4 strings, rather than having to voice the full chord.
Of course if you can't set the capo in such a way that all the chords are easy enough, then ultimately the answer is just to practice more, improve your technique (perhaps with the help of a teacher?) and/or get the guitar set up better. It's unfortunate how many guitars are out there with a poor set-up - high action at the nut is a particular problem.
After doing some research, it seems I was wrong. There are popular songs that contain all 12 major chords. Probably the most popular one of them is:
Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen
Contains the following major chords:
C, C#, D, D#, E, F, F#, G, G#, A, A#, B
Damn.
It also contains the following minor chords:
Cm, Fm, Gm, G#m, A#m, Bm
Full list of chords (stolen from Ultimate-Guitar):
There are a lot of songs that come close, mainly songs that have lots of key changes or modulations in them, like Will you be there by Michael Jackson (misses 1) or Love on top by Beyoncé (misses 2). I haven't had the time to check out more songs, though.
Triads also form either the lower part or upper part of a 7th chord, so you could see if the other part would also fit in the music. So, for example, say you can't play an E major chord. See if an E7 would fit in the music. If so, play a G#dim instead. Or perhaps a C# minor would fit.
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