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CAGED system (part 1) lesson
CAGED system (part 2) lesson
Okay, this lesson is all about taking the first step in learning how to use the CAGED system to build up a chord vocabulary, and how to improve your phrasing at the same time. In this lesson I will show you how to isolate parts of the fretboard and using the CAGED system, still be able to play all the chords you need despite only having a fraction of the neck. As you practice doing this, you will become aware of more and more chord shapes, giving you much more material to write your songs with.
As I showed you in the previous lessons, you can pretty much make different versions of the same chord anywhere on the fretboard so one way to help expend you chord knowledge is to play a couple of chords that you think fit well together, and then play the same chords but only using a certain part of the fretboard.
Let’s say that the tab for what you are playing is this:
E||-0----------------|-3----------------||-0----------------|-------------------|
B||-0----------------|-0----------------||-1----------------|-1-----------------|
G||-0----------------|-0----------------||-2----------------|-0-----------------|
D||-2----------------|-0----------------||-2----------------|-2-----------------|
A||-2----------------|-2----------------||-0----------------|-3-----------------|
E||-0----------------|-3----------------||------------------|-------------------|
This is a basic four chord sequence. It’s written in E minor, for those of you who are interested, but for those of you who aren’t, what this means is that even though there are happy chords this sounds sad overall. Now I want you to play the same chord sequence but you can only play using notes from between the 5th and 10th fret on each string, with no open notes.
Sounds tough doesn’t it? In the previous lessons I showed you how to find chords using all the shapes C-A-G-E-D in the CAGED system. By moving these shapes up and down you can get a chord for any root note anywhere on the fretboard. Here is how you could play the chord sequence between the 5th and 10th frets(I have also written the names of the chords and the shapes used for anyone who has read my previous lessons on this system):
E minor (A shape) G major (C shape) A minor (E shape) C major (G shape)
E||-7----------------|--7---------------||-5----------------|-------------------|
B||-8----------------|--8---------------||-5----------------|-------------------|
G||-9----------------|--7---------------||-5----------------|-5-----------------|
D||-9----------------|--9---------------||-7----------------|-5-----------------|
A||-7----------------|--10--------------||-7----------------|-7-----------------|
E||------------------|------------------||-5----------------|-8-----------------|
This actually changes the overtone of the chords as they have been moved to different positions on the guitar, and now the last two chords are actually lower than the first two, instead of being higher like they were before. However, still in the same part of the fretboard you can use the CAGED system to find another version of these chords that is still higher than the first two chords, so that the song still has the feel of ‘climbing’ towards a resolution.
E minor (A shape) G major (C shape) A minor (D shape) C major (E shape)
E||-7----------------|--7---------------||-8----------------|-8-----------------|
B||-8----------------|--8---------------||-10---------------|-8-----------------|
G||-9----------------|--7---------------||-9----------------|-9-----------------|
D||-9----------------|--9---------------||-7----------------|-10----------------|
A||-7----------------|-10---------------||------------------|-------------------|
E||------------------|------------------||------------------|-------------------|
Now, that chord on the end may leave you wandering why I called it an E shape when the E chord I put at the beginning was all the way across the fretboard. Well, it’s actually just using a part of the full chord to make it sound higher and keep the feel of the song, while keeping the necessary notes to make sure it doesn’t sound out of tune.
All I gave myself to work with was 5 frets on each string, that’s a maximum of 25 notes, but I was able to pull all the chords I needed up from further down the neck and even get two versions of the same chords within this space. Using this technique to get the most out of your fretboard will work wonders with you song-writing abilities as it will help you to find so many chords that you probably weren’t aware were there before.
I strongly recommend that you do this up and down the neck using whichever scales and chords you feel like using. It will really make a difference in your attitude to playing, and save you a lot of time when you are searching for “that one chord that should go here, but I don’t know what it is”.
I hope that this lesson has helped some of you out there, and I will get to work on writing how to blend your lead guitar playing into the caged system as well in the next lesson. If you have any problems or comments then feel free to let me know.
Take care guys and I’ll see you next time!
The CAGED system part 4: Using the CAGED system to boost you lead guitar playing
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