The capo

After puting a capo on your guitar. Why on earth would tablature ever have zeros?
Why not tab it out leaving out the frets below the capo?
Is there a reason to this that i dont see?

The point of a capo is so you can play something in a different key as if it was open (if it's easier, or makes more sense to do so). The capo essentially acts as a fake nut... and makes whatever fret you put it at at the open fret. So, in effect, you are playing the 'zeros', because the capo becomes a temporary nut.

You have to remember, tab is not music notation; a certain number does not correlate to a certain note. If you tuned down your top string to D and left the others at A D G B E, you wouldn't change the numbers on the top string when tabbing something, you'd just put Drop D tuning at the top of the page.

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It gets confusing, because they change (say capo 2nd fret) 2nd fret to 0 fret, 14th to 12th.
Imagine anything behind the capo disappeared.

Im with nullnaught, why not leave 2 as 2. A capo may act as a temp nut, but 5 is 5 even if 1-4 "missing"

so then if it was a chord sheet and you had a capo on the second fret, and if you played a G shaped chord, would you put it down as G or A on the sheet?

Doz you do make sence and i agree with you but dominigan_lefty says it best.

Why not leave 2 as 2. A capo may act as a temp nut, but 5 is 5 even if 1-4 "missing"

i completely agree. totally. it doesn't make a lot of sense. if you are playing "open" chords it's not that big of a deal. but what really screws me up is... for instance the song "pounding" by the band Doves. it uses a capo, and --- this is all from memory so don't quote me on it --- i think there's an "F#" and a "C" and an "A" or "Am" but they aren't those chords because of the capo. but what really screws me up is that the solo is a D shape at the 14th fret... so when it's written in tab is says 14, but it's not actually the 14th fret, it's capo+14. i spent a good month thinking that everyone who tabbed out this song was an idiot

Yeah. Like for Norweigian Wood for example. I think they should tab it out without the capo and say this song uses a capo on the 2nd fret normally.

I think it's just for simplicity's sake.

You shouldn't be using tabs anyway. You should be working it out by ear.

well that's easy for you to say, but if you don't have the ability to just listen to a song and figure out how it's played you will be reading tabs.

the reason it's not simple is because the frets are marked at every 3rd, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 12th fret from the nut. that's how you know what fret you are playing on easily. so if you see a tab and it says to play at the 13th fret, but you have a capo on the 2nd fret, suddenly you have to do extra math in your head just to find out which note to play.... it's simpler if you just say "play on the 15th fret".

additionally, the cap only affects notes played with open strings. if you are playing a bar chord or playing a solo down the neck, the capo has no affect on the sound of the guitar. so why should the capo be taken into consideration when tabbing it out?

the only counter argument i can think of is that the capo can be moved/removed in order to change the key but the relative fret distances are constant.

Because a capo makes whatever fret you put it at the first fret. That's the whole point. So if you count from the open string, the first fret you get to isn't 3, it's 1. That's much simpler.

As for chords... if it's a G, play the G shape. If it's an A, play the A shape. If you're only playing barre chords, then you don't really need a capo.

well i understand the purpose of the capo, but the argument here is that the guitar neck is already labeled with markers to indicate fret numbers relative to the guitar's nut. how do you find the 14th fret? do you count from the nut? no, it's two past the "12" marker and 1 before the "15" marker. after a while you learn the position of the frets by memory and you don't need to look at the neck.

but the point is, if you are reading music in the form of a tab and suddenly the 14th fret pops up, but you have a capo on, now you need to perform math in your head.

this is why it's confusing. although you make wherever you put the capo the "first fret", the guitar neck is still labeled (and your hands still remember the positions) relative to the nut.

This by far would be the simplest form and easiest to understand.

I understand it's confusing, but you should understand that not everyone thinks the same way. Sure, counting from the fret markers is fine, they're naturally on the guitar... the capo is not so there has to be a change. Obviously the majority believes that it's easier to do what macandkanga seems to be saying, and what I agree with that. You don't ALWAYS use the fret markers, if someone says play the 7th fret, then says now play the 9th, you just go two up from where you were, so as long as you know where you are before you started playing it's fine.

7 to 9 is an easy transition. but what about 2 to 15?

you learn the positions on the guitar neck based on the feel of the neck, the feel of the frets, and the position of your left hand in relation to the nut and the bridge. the capo changes the numbers of the frest but it does not change the other variables.

just because everyone does it one way doesn't mean it's the most intuitive way. my way is the best!!!! yay!!!!!!!!!

Easy for me to say? Bah! When I first got here a while back, I was a tab reading master. However, I've had my run ins with bad tabs. I think it was Jazz that suggested that I start doing some ear training exercises and start trying to figure out music by ear.

After about 2-3 months of practicing, I've been able to transcribe my own music. I now have written about 7 covers of songs from ear alone, as well as transcribing the melody/harmony to the guitar and playing everything at once. I just finished working on "DJ got us falling in love again" this morning cause my roommate was playing it.

So... with that being said: Put the work into it and you will see the rewards eventually.

I think its easier to have zeros.