Capo started off as an extremely simple, though powerful, music playback application. Using the gorgeous, and intuitive user interface, one could slow down a song, change the pitch, and loop certain bits. User interface was its strong point, and it still is today, with the release of Capo 2.

Capo 2.0 retains its simple user interface, but completely changes the scope of the app. You’re no longer dealing with just slowing down tempo and changing the pitch; it’s a full fledged learning tool. For starters, the timeline is no longer a classic sound wavelenth, but a ‘spectogram’, which shows you notes according to the musical scale. You can click any area of the spectogram to get the note (which is placed in your tab section at the bottom). Drag out lengths for each note, and Capo will try to figure out finger placement on the fretboard.

The star feature of Capo, is on-the-fly tabbing. While the audio is playing, just hit the Create tab button, and Capo will automatically figure out the chord and paste it in the tab bar (with a slick animation, at that). You can’t take Capo’s word for it though, as it fumbles even on the most straightforward song. It does however give you a good idea as to what chords you should be looking for, so you can figure out the rest of the chords by ear — ‘teach a man to fish’, right? I would have loved to see a pop up showing you how to play each chord, but perhaps that’s okay for a later version.

To top it off, developer Chris Liscio has rebuilt the application using OpenCL foundation (hence, Snow Leopard only) for computing. I can’t tell if it’s faster, but it’s nice to know that my GPU is being taxed even to the slightest degree. For what it’s worth, it wasn’t slow to begin with.

Capo is not the accurate tool that will tell you exactly what you need to do. It’s merely a tool that will lend a helping hand so you can learn how to play the guitar. If you’re having difficulty figuring out chords, following quick notes, and basically suck at the strings, Capo might just change things for you. Capo costs $49 for a license, and $20 for upgrades. Might be steep, but there’s a very liberal demo, which you can use for five minutes of playtime, at a time.

Wallpaper used is Drowning by Big-sb.