Herb,

" Now... if you really want to have fun.... go play with a church orchestra. The one I was in for a time, they called it a band but it was really an orchestra. Horns, reeds, strings.... and many of those instruments were the Bb or Eb variety. For some reason, they don't know how to play in any sort of a sane key like C... or G.... or E and asking them to play by ear????? forget that. They prefer Bb, Eb, Ab, and so on. The sheet music.... yep, they used sheet music for everything, was in those keys and they even put the guitar chord chart at the top of the staff. It totally blew the minds of the other guitar players ( there were several who rotated in and out depending on their teen church band schedule)when they would slap on a capo to play the song.... write out the "real chords" to use, and I would simply play the chords as written on the sheet music. It's all part of being a guitar player. "

Boom - I had to do that for years; except I was an unabashed capo user. And yes, using a capo is perfectly fine for guitar playing, particularly when the original song was composed on guitar, in guitar keys, and the horn player key voicings sound just plain wrong. Music theory comes in handy with that. That was the case with most of the songs we played - they were written by guitar players; played and recorded in modern rock band arrangements in perfectly reasonable keys, then when the publishing house got hold of them, they 'horned them up'. The songs, with the piano player using all 10 fingers, a raft of trumpet players, 1 sax, 1 trombone, one clarinet, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, electric bass and V-drums; they almost all ended up sounding terrible, except for the songs we would rehearse for months for the Easter musical - then we could make them sound passable.

There is no shame in capo use, particularly to match voicing of known recordings but with key changes in play from the original, or when there's evidence the original was capo'ed to begin with.

My Songs, photos, writing,etc.
My Sound Cloud