CAGED Guitar System: How To Make The Most Of It

Most teaching on the CAGED system focuses on major chords and scales. It’s pointless going to all that trouble learning a system and then only using a small percentage of it’s versatility. The whole point of making the most of a method like this is to get you learning the fretboard and visualising the notes in an efficient, usable manner, one that avoids the all too common method of thinking only in shapes and scale patterns. CAGED is just a term. As we progress through these lessons we want to start thinking less and less about C-A-G-E-D patterns and just start thinking about chords and chord tones.

Minor chords based on the open positions are less popular than their major counterparts because they are hard to use and require a more finger stretches, the worst being the G minor and C minor chord forms. Sure, it’s great if you can do them but it’s not that important for lead guitar. What’s more important is knowing where the notes are and being able to visualise the chord patterns. A lot of guitarists when learning stuff like this ten to think of a chord as needing to be played on all five or six strings. The thing to realise is all non seventh major and minor chords are Triads that just contain three notes. Getting used to these triad shapes is possibly more useful than thinking about chords that use all six strings.

The diagrams below show the minor chords in the CAGED system. Learn them and play around with them over jam tracks. The ones that are difficult, just break them up into smaller string groups.

In the next lesson we will learn how seventh chords are applied to the CAGED system and then we can move onto breaking these chord patterns down into smaller parts. Remember, creating creative and interesting solos relies on a command of the fretboard, the more options you have the better you are going to be. Once we have learnt all these patterns, all we need to do is understand how they are formed and then we can begin putting them to real world use by combining them with scales and starting to think about the notes in a solo instead of relying on scale patterns which lead to predictable guitar playing.

Making use of chord tones

The previous lesson showed you how to find the CAGED chords from a progression without straying too far from the playing position. Getting used to this allows you to easily visualise and locate chord tones. Using these chord tones within your guitar solo will enable you to create lead breaks that always work with the chord progression. Most guitar solos are a mixture of scales, licks and chord tones. The real art is being able to mix these ideas together. The easiset way to accomplish this is to practice the playing the tones only to create a melodic solo. Being able to find these notes with ease is very important and until you can do so, it’s best not to try using them too much with scale playing until they become a natural part of your guitar playing.

The TAB below shows how you can experiment by creating a simple melodic guitar solo based on the same chord progression as that in Lesson 1. Remember, staying as close to one position as possible is the important thing. The other thing to remember is you don’t need to be using all six strings otherwise it becomes predictable. You also don’t need to play all of the notes within a chord, for example, you could just hold onto one note from a chord for an entire bar and then the next chord change you could play a few more chord tones from the next chord. Breaking it up like this steers it away from being too cheesy. The example below also sounds a bit cheesy but you need to start like this to make sure you are learning properly. As you gain experience these ideas will creep into your natural scale type of soloing and this is when the CAGED method starts being useful. Although I think “method” is the wrong word. It’s better to think of CAGED as being a kind of overlay or guide across the fretboard rather than a system or method. Eventually you won’t even think about CAGED, everything just becomes chord tones and notes.

Playing chords in one position

Two of the biggest differences between pro and amateur guitar solos are knowing when to play the right notes at the right time and making those note transitions work smoothly. This is something that you might think would take years to accomplish but it’s not really that hard. Sure it takes some time but the biggest hurdle the beginner guitarist has overcoming this problem is most beginner and amateur guitarists just don’t know how to go about practicing this kind of stuff. Where do you start?

Learning the notes on the fretboard is definitely a big deal and helps your guitar solos massively but a lot of rock and blues use a lot of very common chord progressions. This is the best place to get started on putting the CAGED system to good use and see some real benefits in a short amount of time from the CAGED method.

Knowing the CAGED chords and being able to find them quickly is the easiest way to make use of chord tones in your guitar solos. Once you know these very well then you can use the system to make sure you land on the good sounding notes whenever the chords change in a chord progression. You know those guitar solos you hear that always sound so natural and flowing with the music, those are the ones that make sure the chord changes are reflected within the solo itself as well as the other instruments playing the backing. If a solo is self supporting then it’s always going to fit well within the rest of the band.

Once you have this kind of stuff down then you are on your way. Don’t get too excited though, there is a lot to learn yet, this is just the basics of putting the CAGED guitar system to good use. The toughest part is getting so used to it that you can move to any chord while moving your fretting hand as little as possible away from it’s current position. Why? Because this is how you get your guitar solo to sound so smooth and fit perfectly with the music. If you can manage to choose notes within your guitar solo that change between the chords with the least amount of distance, this is when you start to sound like a real pro. We can’t rush ahead this fast so for now lets just take an example chord progression and look for the CAGED chords that are closest to the position we are playing. For this example lets say we are around the fifth fret and using the following chord sequence.

Chords: A / F# minor / D / E

Here are the CAGED chords around the fifth fret.

Being able to find those patterns quickly takes some practice and the more you know the notes on the fretboard the better. It really doesn’t take very long to do learn any of these things, here’s a fact, most beginners spend more time looking for answers and tricks on how to learn the fretboard than it actually takes to learn them with the correct practice!

Just do a few exercises everyday, it doesn’t need to be anything in particular.. Just pay attention to what you are playing and practice the above idea in all twelve keys regularly, within a month you’ll be well on your way. Within a few months you could know the entire fretboard with ease as long as you stay focused and make sure you are learning and not just going through the motions. I’ll do an in depth lesson on that another time but right now lets stick with the CAGED system!

For now, all you need to do is practice the above chords in those positions. Don’t worry if you find them difficult to finger, the point is to get to know the note positions and chord patterns. When it comes to creating our guitar solos, we want all of those notes firmly fixed in our minds without any thought required. It’s good if you can play them as full chords but for the sake of what we are learning here, you only need to play the notes. The TAB below will give you the idea. Practice regular for a few days and then you will be ready to move on to the next lesson.

 Making your guitar solos sound professional

 The Caged system isn’t just about relating chord patterns to the major scale. In fact as far as I’m concerned it’s the least important. A good guitar solo is more often centred around chord tones rather than scales. Sure, scales are an important part of it but the difference between pro and amateur guitar lead breaks mostly boil down to three things. Amateur guitar solos are most often a combination of the following three things.

1. Poor guitar technique
2. Over use of scale patterns
3. Un-awareness of the importance of the underlying chords

The first one isn’t so hard to grasp, most beginner guitarists know their technique might need some work and they usually practice harder to improve it. The other two are a bit more difficult and they are a related problem. The beginner and even some intermediate guitarists aren’t necessarily bad at playing lead guitar, they just have limited knowledge of how to practice and improve their guitar solos to sound professional. This is one of the bigger problems of self taught guitarists, the books they use don’t really help much so it’s hardly a surprise.

Many magazines and guitar methods will tell you all about scales and maybe even explain the CAGED guitar system but unfortunately not in nearly enough detail as they should. The heart of the CAGED method is about knowing how to find chords as well as chord tones anywhere on the fretboard. This is more important than just relating five chord shapes to five major scale shapes.

Another problem with they common explanations of the CAGED system is that it is always related to major chords only. This is a mistake. Yes the five common chords make are the basis of the system but shouldn’t be limited to the five major chords (triads) only. It’s just as important and not even much more difficult to use this same method to know the minor chords and all the seventh variations.

It takes time to learn them all but the good news is it gets easier as you go on. At first it can sound like to much to learn but it really isn’t that bad. Once you get going there are so many similarities between the shapes that it comes together a lot quicker than you might expect at first. A few months regular, focused practice and it’s quite possible for most guitarists to have put the CAGED system to very good use for all the chord variations and anywhere on the guitar neck.

The best way to make use of this method is to simply start using it straight away, but do so in small stages so that you build your skill slowly. Try to do it all at once and you will probably get nowhere.

One of the first things you should practice is to play the chords to a variety of chord progressions but try to stay as close to one position on the guitar neck as possible. Learn this well and you will open up a whole new world with your guitar solos. Use the practicing ideas on this website to build your CAGED knowledge and your solos will improve by a huge amount. There will be quite a lot of practice ideas coming so watch out and start improving your guitar playing now.

Use the CAGED system to quickly find your way around the fretboard.

The whole idea of using the CAGED method to create guitar solos is a very useful one but is sometimes oversold when you hear it spoken about. If you are new to the CAGED guitar system then stick around because you are about to learn a very useful thing to help with your guitar playing. The only thing is, don’t expect to revolutionise your guitar playing overnight, it’s a great method but it takes some time to get used to it enough before you can use it to it’s full benefit.

Throughout the pages on this site we will be finding ways to use the CAGED method by building our knowledge one step at a time with practical examples including TAB, audio and some practice jam tracks.

The first thing we ned to do is untangle a few myths. You can’t just learn what the caged method is and then start using it to any benefit. Not only does it take time to get used to but you will also need to be familiar with the notes on the fretboard. If you can’t find them easily at least on the fifth and sixth strings then you aren’t going anywhere fast with the CAGED method.

I’m not going to waste time telling you how to find the notes on the fretboard, a quick Google search and you will find thousands of websites with that information. What we will take a look at here is the important part… using the notes on the fretboard to locate the chords we want.

The CAGED diagrams on the main page gives the basic info on the CAGED system and it’s related chords. Here’s how we use the fretboard notes to line up those chords. The red notes are the root notes of each chord. It’s important that you learn these so well that you don’t need to think about them. As you get better at finding the notes on the fretboard you will find it easy to find these chords in any position almost instantly.

The red notes are the root notes, you must learn them.

Practice these chord positions regularly until you know them inside out and make sure you practice them in all twelve keys, this is extremely important. If you can’t use them in all keys then you are never going to see any benefit from using this method. You might be wondering why learning the chords are so important, after all isn’t the CAGED system supposed to be all about helping you with your guitar solos? Yes it is, however the chord sequence itself is the heart of the system. It’s these chord shapes and positions that you can use as your foundation or your guide to find chord tones, arpeggios and scales anywhere on the fretboard very quickly and that is the heart of creating good guitar solos.

A great guitar solo isn’t just about choosing the right scale, that’s easy to do for most chord progressions. What we are looking for to create professional sounding lead guitar is ways to break out of the scale rut and the systematic use of them. A good guitar solo takes as much notice, possibly even more notice of the chord tones. Scales can be put to good use in a decent guitar lead but, they are often used as the core, the foundation if you like, but the best solo’s have character. They always fit the music perfectly and most of the time this id done by knowing the best notes to use at the best time, which is basically making proper use of chord tones that fit the chord at that moment in the chord progression.

In the next lesson you will learn how to make use of the CAGED chords and patterns to create guitar solos with chord tones instead of scales.