The Working Guitarist’s Best Friend
There’s an old cliché that claims using a capo is cheating, and that a guitarist should be able to transpose anything on the fly.
This belief is usually held by singers and beginner guitar players who don’t really understand how these things work.
If you’ve been playing in bands for years, you know that playing Summer of ’69 in Db is a terrible idea. Thankfully, you can usually argue your way out of that particular one.
But when it comes to Sweet Child O’ Mine, things get more complicated. The song is played in G/Em and needs those open-position chords to sound right—but the guitar is tuned down a semitone, so it actually sounds in Gb/Em.
Don’t get me wrong, Ebm can be a perfectly fine key—just not for Sweet Child O’ Mine. It won’t sound right at all. But try explaining to a singer that it needs to be a semitone higher than the original…
The best solution? Bring a second guitar to every gig, pre-tuned down a semitone. But let’s be honest—can you really be asked? There’s something very appealing about just using one guitar. And if you’ve got a spare, that’s supposed to be, well, a spare.
I learned this the hard way. About 20 minutes before a gig, the singer turned to me and said, “Ah yeah, I forgot to tell you—we’re all tuned down to Eb. Is that OK?”
With a Strat using a floating trem? Not really. But there was nothing else to do but tune down and keep re-tuning after almost every song until the guitar finally settled.
No Spare Guitar? No Problem—This Pedal Transposes for You
So, you don’t want to bring a spare guitar tuned down—and then there are those gigs when the singer, last minute, decides everything needs to go down a tone because they’re not feeling great today.
The solution? Buy, borrow, or steal a Digitech Drop pedal. With it, you simply select how much lower you want to go. Problem solved.
Summer of ’69 in Db? No problem. Sweet Child O’ Mine as it is on the record? Sure thing. Last-minute key change? Let’s do it.
Even songs like Mr. Brightside, which everyone plays in Db—just play it in D, engage the pedal, and it’ll sound so much better.
I’d even recommend playing Shut Up and Dance up a semitone and using the pedal to bring it back down to—yep—Db. It’s just more fun that way.
The other week, I did a gig with a keyboard player who had perfect pitch and didn’t read music—not even chord charts, really. When told a song would be a tone down, he looked terrified.
I said the forbidden phrase: Just use the transpose button!
He looked at me and said, “I can’t. My perfect pitch tells me it’s a G, but I’m playing an A. I just can’t do it—it messes with my head. I have to basically learn any tune from scratch every time it’s in a new key.”
Now, I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds like the ultimate luxury problem.
I guess my point is this: if you don’t have perfect pitch, you should probably get the Digitech Drop pedal. It’ll make you sound better in the real world—where we often have to follow people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
Personally, I can’t cope with the tiny bit of latency it introduces, but maybe you can. I’m probably going to have to bite the bullet and bring a second guitar tuned to Eb.
And if anything’s more than a semitone down, I’ll transpose it. But maybe you don’t have to. Maybe the Digitech Drop pedal is the best thing you’ll ever buy.
