About this issue
Why this chart.
A capo is a clamp that shortens every string at once, and the entire point of it is that your hands keep doing something easy while the guitar produces something hard. Put the capo at the third fret, play the shape you know as C, and a listener hears E♭. This chart is the lookup table for that trade: eight familiar open shapes down the side, capo frets zero through nine across the top, and the chord that actually sounds in every cell.
That is the half of the capo question most players ask first — "I have the capo on, what am I playing?" The second table on the sheet answers the reverse and more useful question: your singer needs the song in B, which capo fret lets you play it with open chords? Read down the key column, find the row where the shapes turn into ones you know, and clamp there. Countless songs that look unplayable in their written key are three open chords plus a capo at the right fret.
The maths behind every cell is a single rule: each fret raises the sounding pitch one semitone. Capo 2 with a G shape sounds A. Capo 5 with an E shape sounds A as well — the same chord from a different shape, in a different register, with a different string ringing on top. That last part is why capos are a tone decision and not only a convenience one. Two guitarists playing the same progression from different capo positions is one of the oldest arrangement tricks there is.
Nothing on this page needs a chord diagram, which is why it prints as a dense, legible grid rather than a wall of fretboards. Tape it inside a gig folder or the lid of a case. It is the reference you want at the exact moment there is no time to work anything out.
How to use it
To find what you are playing: pick your shape's row, run across to your capo fret, read the sounding chord. To find where to put the capo: use the second table, find the key you need, and clamp at the fret listed — then play the shapes in that row as written. Place the capo just behind the fret wire, not on top of it, and press only as hard as it takes to stop the buzz; over-tightening pulls the strings sharp and no amount of tuning fixes that.