Guitar/ukulele Jam / Capo Question

Hey this may be a stupid question but I need some help. If I'm playing with someone on guitar and they have a capo on their guitar lets say on the 2nd fret would this mean for my ukulele and the guitar to sound right I would also need to have a capo on the 2nd fret?
Thanks in advance I just like jamming with pple on guitar but sometimes it just doesnt sound quite right.
-Seth

Doesn't matter...as long as you both are playing in the same key. If your guitarist playing a G chord...you too should play a G chord. Your guitarist is using a capo so that he/she can use familiar open chord shapes to play in a different key. If you place a capo at the 2nd fret and play your "C" chord, it will be a "D" chord. G becomes A, and so on.

Yeah, you would either need to capo at the second fret or transpose your chords up 1 whole step...

G would be played as an A, D would be played as an E, etc.

Hope that helps!

It's important to remember that there are chord shapes and the actual sound they produce. So as bongofury pointed out, if you're playing a G on your un-capoed* ukulele, the same shape becomes G# capoed at the first fret, A capoed at the second, etc.

There are three reasons to play with a capo:

• To shift the key of a song you already know into one that a vocalist or other instrument can deal with easily.
• To make chords in a song that are hard to deal with (e.g., the infamous E major on a uke) more accessible to players who aren't good at unusual chord shapes.
• For a particular sound. There are songs that I can play just fine with the strings open but sound better in the same chords (but different shapes) capoed at another position.

So a song that goes C#-F#-G# might be called out as "Capo 1" and have its chords (shapes) called out as as C-F-G because that's how it was originally played or because whoever did the transcription figured it would be easier to deal with.

There are songs I play with a capo on the guitar that work out just fine on an un-capoed uke; you just have to know what the chords actually are and see if they fit.

--Mark

*I will be consulting with Dan Quayle on the proper spelling of this word.

I had a fly fishing friend that played guitar and mandolin with Ricky Skaggs. We recorded a few tunes in a studio together and Ben would capo up the neck and play in harmony to my guitar. He was not playing the same chord, it was an actual harmony. I first time I tried to wrap my brain around that I thought my head would melt.

Alright this makes much more sense now. Thanks for all the info guys.