[jlgtx]

I have to confess, I've been using MS for years, and I just figured out the capo feature. Up to now, I've been transposing ChordPros for capo use. I knew the capo thing was in there somewhere, but finally had to resort to reading the fine manual in order to find it.

It seems to me that the capo assignment would be more intuitively located either in the "Capo Display Settings" window, or as a selectable tab in the "Transpose" window -- i.e., you can either transpose or apply a capo (or both, I suppose).

Thoughts?

[sciurius]

Transposition and capo are fundamentally different, even though it is easy to believe they are related.

Transposition changes the song. When transposing from A → C every chord in the song becomes 3 intervals higher, e.g. a D chord becomes an F chord. You transpose a song when you need a different key for the singer, or when using a transposing instrument like a trumpet or saxophone. But the chords will sound as played, e.g. an A chord played will sound as an A chord.

Capo is for fretted string instruments only. Guitar, bass guitar, mandoline, ukulele. It makes playing of chords easier, simpler chords, less barrées. With a capo, the chord played will no longer sound as played. With a capo on 2, a D chord played will sound as an E chord.

Now there seem to be two schools of thought. One is: capo 2, write D, play D, sound E. The other one is capo 2, write D, play C, sound D. Personally I have never encountered the latter but some people consider this useful.

To get back to the OP suggestion, the first behaviour modifies the song view, so it would be logical to have this on the song settings page. The second behaviour would be more logical to have on the transpose page. But having two different pages to specify capo would be confusing and the advantages would be mininal.

Personally I'm fine with (and used to) the way it is now.

[jlgtx]

Technically, a capo turns something with frets into a transposing instrument. The difference is that, unlike a “native” transposing instrument which has a fixed interval, the guitarist has to know where to place the capo so that the transposition works as intended. Same goes for an electronic keyboard that can be transposed by any interval; the keyboardist needs to know the interval. So straight transposition is fine for a fixed-interval transposing instrument, but a variable-interval transposing instrument needs the additional piece of information that the capo text provides.

The thing that’s confusing to me is that you can’t apply a capo on the Capo Display Settings page, it’s on the Text Display Settings page. And visually, the “quarter note up/down” icon (which brings up the Transpose settings) makes more sense for either transposition or capo — both of which change the displayed chords from the original key to something else — than the “A” icon for text display settings. It just seems to me that the capo application control ought to be in one of those two spots rather than the Text Display Settings. 

Regardless, the feature is there and it works, so this little nitpicky discussion I started is definitely nothing that should affect the development priority list.

[Jonk]

I sure wish I could find it. I don't often use capo, but when I do, I spend hours on the internet finding it.

[Zubersoft]

Are you asking where to set the capo in MobileSheets? Load a text or chord pro file, tap the A at the top right, tap Text Display Settings, then adjust the capo slider.

Mike