Unlocking the CAGED System
In This Chapter
- Visualizing patterns on the guitar
- Where CAGED comes from
- Exploring the five different CAGED patterns
- Linking all five CAGED patterns together
- Linking pairs of CAGED patterns together
Everyone learns in different ways. One of the challenges of learning guitar theory is how to process all the knowledge you’re learning in a manner you can easily recall. For many people, being able to recognize and to repeat patterns can be beneficial.
And music is full of patterns. Songs are often a series of repeated chord progressions (which you’ll learn about in Chapter 11), and songs will also usually have repeated rhythm patterns as well as short riffs or fills played by a guitar or other instrument. These serve as musical “hooks” and typically are played frequently throughout a song.
When it comes to learning guitar theory and to developing a solid working knowledge of the fretboard, guitarists often limit their search for patterns solely to scales. That’s certainly understandable because the fretboard is a series of individual notes strung out across the guitar’s neck.
But if you’re like most guitar players, you started out learning basic open-position chords. You undoubtedly then progressed to scales and more complicated musical techniques and ideas, but the foundation of your guitar playing, more likely than not, is based on those simple chords you first learned.
And five of those basic open-position chords can give you all the patterns you need to navigate around the fretboard.
Visualizing Chords as Shapes
When you first learned how to play chords on the guitar, you probably didn’t learn which notes made up any particular chord. Neither did you learn about the intervals of the root, major or minor third, or fifth. You simply placed your fingers on the fretboard wherever your teacher or a chord chart instructed. After repeatedly practicing and playing these basic chords, you gained confidence that your fingers would form the chord shapes each time you switched from one chord to another.
And without even realizing it, you probably came to think of these basic chords in visual terms based on a typical chord chart. You think “D” and you see your fingers form a triangle on the first three strings at the second and third frets. “A” is a straight line across the B, G, and D strings at the second fret. “E” and “Am” actually share the same shape and frets, but they are simply played on different strings.
Knowing your chord shapes turned out to be very helpful in Chapter 9, where you learned the guitar theory behind playing barre chords. You combined the guitar theory with your knowledge to play various barre chords all over the fretboard in what we called “E shapes,” “A shapes,” and “C shapes.” The sets of E-shaped and A-shaped barre chords both contained not just the shape of the major chord, but the shapes of the basic E7 and A7, Em and Am, and Em7 and Am7 chords as well.
It certainly seems logical that if one can use these open-position chord shapes as the basis for playing barre chords, then other basic open shapes should be able to serve as templates for barre chords as well.
D and G are the two remaining open-position chords you’ve yet to try as barre chords. However, unless you have huge hands and very slender and agile fingers, you’ll probably find playing either of these two chords as barre chords very difficult. Here’s what you’d be trying to do if you wanted to play an A major chord in either a D-shaped or G-shaped barre chord:
A major as a D-shaped or G-shaped barre chord.
If you thought C-shaped barre chords were trouble, you’ll probably wish you had never tried either of these two new shapes. The D shape, with its root note being on the D string, technically isn’t even a barre chord. And that doesn’t seem to matter since it’s practically impossible for most people to finger in the first place.
Likewise, the G-shape barre is more than enough to make most guitarists avoid it in the way beginners tend to avoid barre chords.
Turning Chord Shapes into “CAGED”
For the purpose of learning and mastering the fretboard, though, it’s not about turning either the D or G shape into a barre chord. The point is to recognize their shapes and to be able to place those open shapes anywhere on the neck of the guitar. Then it’s a matter of understanding just how these five shapes—C, A, G, E, and D (called “CAGED” for hopefully obvious reasons)—interlock with each other up and down the fretboard.
You want to think of CAGED more as a navigation system than as a means of playing full chords. Recognizing the patterns of each of the five open-position chords at any point along the fretboard will lead you directly from one position to another up and down the neck.
Here are the five different CAGED patterns. Each is presented in terms of the intervals of its chord:
C
The pattern of C major.
C, as you remember, has its root on the fifth (A) string. You can also find its fifth on both the low E (sixth) and high E (first) strings at the same fret as the root, as shown in the smaller circles on this diagram. Additionally, the third can be found on the low E string three frets lower than the root.
A
The pattern of A major.
The A-shape pattern also has its root on the fifth (A) string. In addition to the notes of the open-position chord, you can also find its fifth on the low E (sixth) string at the same fret as the root, as well as its third, which is also on the A string but four frets higher than the root.
G
The pattern of G major.
In addition to the notes of the open-position chord shape, you can also find the fifth of the G shape on the B string on the same fret as the root is on the low E (sixth) string.
E
The pattern of E major.
In the E-shape pattern, you can also find the third of the major chord on the low E (sixth) string four frets higher up the neck from the root.
D
The pattern of D major.
The D-shape pattern, as mentioned, has its root on the fourth (D) string. You can also find the fifth on the A string at the same fret as the root, as well as its third, which is on the D string but four frets higher than the root on the same string.
Shifting Through All Five CAGED Patterns
A good way to get comfortable with CAGED is to work through all five patterns in order using one single note, especially the root note of any of the five chords. For example, if you started with the C note at the first fret of the B string, you’d shift through all five forms in order like this:
Working through the CAGED patterns from the C pattern onward.
Now work through all five patterns starting with the note of the open A string:
Working through the CAGED patterns from the A pattern onward.
Next begin with the G note at the third fret of the low E string:
Working through the CAGED patterns from the G pattern onward.
Then start from the E form, using the note of the open low E string as your starting point:
Working through the CAGED patterns from the E pattern onward.
Finally, shift through all five positions beginning with the note of the open D string:
Working through the CAGED patterns from the D pattern onward.
You’ll also want to practice these patterns with notes other than C, A, G, E, and D. As you do, you’ll need to make a few decisions. If you started on the B at the second fret of the A string, for example, using the same pattern you used in starting with the open A string certainly makes sense. But suppose you wanted to start with the B note at the seventh fret of the low E string? Since that root note is on the sixth string, you could start with either the G or the E pattern.
Even at this early stage of familiarizing yourself with the CAGED patterns, it’s good to observe how certain pairs of them overlap each other.
C and D
It’s easy to see how C and D have similar shapes, even in open position form. Here is a good look at how close they are:
Comparing the C and D CAGED patterns.
If you think about it, the shape of the open-position A form (the “straight line across the second fret on the B, G, and D strings” mentioned earlier) is simply two frets up from the open B, G, and D strings of the open-position G chord:
Comparing the A and G CAGED patterns.
G and E
You may not immediately think of G and E as being alike, but if you think of G both as an open-position chord and as an E-shaped barre chord, the similarities become more apparent:
Comparing the G and E CAGED patterns.
Noting the shared notes of these pairs of forms will help you get more familiar with CAGED and will also help you eventually trim out some of the forms in order to move faster around the fretboard, as you’ll discover in Chapters 12 and 21.
Putting Theory to Practice
Once you’ve worked on shifting through the five CAGED positions using the root notes of the chords you play most often, try playing chord arpeggios, even just three notes, using major chords. Again, start out with C, A, G, E, and D but then also add F, F
, B, B
, C, and E to your practice.
Once you get comfortable playing basic triads in one form, try playing arpeggios while switching between the various CAGED positions. The following example plays the C major arpeggio through the C, A, G, and E forms:
CAGED triad practice.
Don’t worry about speed as you practice. Concentrate on being able to pick any note among the first five frets and then finding it anyplace on the neck of your guitar.
Once you’ve done that, pick another single note and see how quickly you can get to that note in each position. Accuracy, as always, will be more important than speed, but speed will indeed come with concentrated practice and repetition.
- Recognizing chord shapes can help you learn the guitar’s fretboard quickly and efficiently.
- The five open-position chord shapes are C, A, G, E, and D.
- You can use the patterns of CAGED to move from one note to another all up and down the neck of your guitar.
- Certain pairs of the CAGED patterns share many notes.
- Practice finding and playing both single notes and the triads of major chords through the CAGED system.