Should I Learn the CAGED System? - 059
Today, I unlock the CAGED system. I talk about what it is, my opinions of it, and how you can make the CAGED system work for you.
What is the CAGED system?
It’s a system for understanding how basic chord shapes are laid out on the fret-board and how scale patterns can fit over these shapes.
This popular system deals with both rhythm and lead guitar.
In a nutshell, it takes your basic major position chord shapes, lines them up across the fret-board, and associates major scale positions to each of these chords.
The name CAGED comes from these cords:
- C chord,
- A chord,
- G chord,
- E chord,
- D chord.
The order is important. Each chord is followed by the next CAGED chord across the fretboard.
The first thing that you need to learn to take advantage of the CAGED system is how to turn your open position CAGED chords into bar chords
Once you do this, they become movable. You can start sliding them across the fret-board and start to link them together.
– Find the C chord across the neck. (C E G).
– Start with a C at the 1st fret Open position.
– Take the root of that C chord and form another C chord between the 3rd and 5th fret.
– Takes on the A shape.
– Take the notes of the 5th fret from the A shape.
– That becomes the three notes together (the ones that are open strings on the open position G chord) in a G shaped chord, when you build a Chord using (c, e, g) between the 5th and 8th fret.
– Take the root of the G shaped chord and it becomes the lowest note of the next E shaped chord.
– The root note on the D string becomes the root note of a D shape to form your last chord at the 10- 13th fret.
Did you learn the CAGED system when you first started learning to play? Do you feel that it helped or hurt your progress with the guitar? Please let us know below in the comments!
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