# C A G E D



## wnpgguy

CAGED.......Any one else use this technique? I recently just learned this theory and was curious if it is relavant to other players. I so far have used it alot.

For anyone not familiar with CAGED, it is an acronym for the 5 major chords C, A, G, E, D. I can't realy explain how it works, it just allows you to find anay "chord" in any "form" anywhere on the frettboard (including scales to), And there is no tedious memorization.


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## Crossroads

Paul said:


> Really, there are only 5 major chords?????
> 
> <sarcasm off>
> 
> Yeah but likes to play a B chord or a F chord for that fact


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## Warren

CAGED is a method of organization or mapping so that you have reference points.










The letters in the acronym CAGED refer to the campfire chord shapes (not any particular key) and how the same chord can be played up the neck by changing the campfire shapes as your hand goes up the neck.

If you make a fretboard map of CAGED, one of the major scale (1-7 refer to scale tones, 1=root etc...) then one of the pentatonic. you get references and shapes for the entire neck for whatever key your playing in. Want to make it minor move the 3's down 1 fret (flatten them), Dominant flatten the 7's and change the chord shapes to be dominants (have the 7 in them). It's still CAGED, just all minors, or all dominants. But, start with the majors, then get tricky!!!!!!!

Hopefully this is what you're trying to explain, or it helps someone.

Woops, pentatonic is in the wrong spot, the minor shape should be under the 6 at the E string.


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## Warren

wnpgguy said:


> ...And there is no tedious memorization.


Actually there is a lot of memorization. It's just in a different format. Maybe this one is better for some people?


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## Warren

upside down? compared to tab yes. It's just a map, mirror image of me playing right handed. I map theory so that I can relate it to the fretboard & I've just become comfortable doing it this way. Thats why I put the string names beside the lines of "stuff"

It's not tab, just a picture of the fretboard.


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## Warren

I've been using this format for years, it makes more sense to show a scale or "where to put your fingers" as a static picture or map.


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## wnpgguy

That diagram is just murder for anyone who is not familiar with it lol. And for those of you who think CAGED is just cowboy chords makes me laugh. This system has no bias to any way of playing. I see it as a basic starting theory to how the fretboard works. This system does not only cover the 5 basic chords. It includes maj, min, aug, dim, sev, dim7, aug7, minor 7 flat five, dom7, and also helps with vertical as well as horizontal scale form.


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## Warren

wnpgguy said:


> That diagram is just murder for anyone who is not familiar with it lol.


I believe I said it's the way that I "map" the fretboard. It's a mirror image of the fretboard for someone right handed. I don't expect everyone to understand it right away, or even to care for that matter. But, if they do want to know I'll show them. It's my way of organizing scales & chords on my guitar fretboard. Because all theory is useless if you can't play it. 

You can use whatever method for writing out the fretboard that suits you. 

You said you couldn't explain it, and other's didn't understand it, "cowboy chords". I just offered that up in hopes that it would explain it or clarify it. Because it helps me.

Here's the words explaination. CAGED: move the chord shapes up the neck in that order so the highest finger horizontally of any string is the lowest finger of the next chord shape and those will all be different versions (not necessarily different voicings) of the same chord. 

CAGED is an acronym for a matrix of shapes based originally on their campfire chord equivalents that maps the fretboard logically. There are others. This is the most common because tons of people know the campfire shapes.


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## wnpgguy

Warren said:


> CAGED is an acronym for a matrix of shapes based originally on their campfire chord equivalents that maps the fretboard logically. There are others. This is the most common because tons of people know the campfire shapes.


I just find peoples reference for this technique apon hearing it, refering it as cowboy chords or campfire chords, is simplistic when it goes way beyond that. 

Is is, however, simplistic in its style of teaching, always rooting your basic knowledge of the 5 keys to learn complex chords more easily. 

When I looked at the alternative to learning these complex chords, which was a phonebook sized chord book "teaching" all the chords/scales I know now, I choose this theory. :smile:


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## Warren

wnpgguy said:


> I just find peoples reference for this technique apon hearing it, refering it as cowboy chords or campfire chords, is simplistic when it goes way beyond that.
> 
> Is is, however, simplistic in its style of teaching, always rooting your basic knowledge of the 5 keys to learn complex chords more easily.
> 
> When I looked at the alternative to learning these complex chords, which was a phonebook sized chord book "teaching" all the chords/scales I know now, I choose this theory. :smile:


It is an excellent method for showing that harmony applied to the guitar is not linear like a piano but more like a matrix and applying it directly to the fretboard. 

It's not 5 keys really, it's the 5 shapes related to the major chords of those keys at the nut that forms the basis for the chord landscape of the neck that you're learning, correct? 

I map, in fact I use transparencies of different scales/chords when I try to figure out how things are interrelated, or I can map chord shapes of different intervals (3rds 4ths 5ths, in pairs triads or 4 notes, and varied string combinations) within a scale -> harmonize the scale directly on the fretboard. Maps come in handy for learning scales also, it makes it easier to make up combinaitons that resolve to a particular note and are not linear. 25 years ago I built chords by harmonizing the scale in standard notation & then finding all the voicings. I just came to drawing a fretboard and numbering the notes because it makes it easier to directly relate harmonic theory to the instrument.

Cheers


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## washburned

*a practical example*

A few years ago I played in a band with a young guitarist, strong on chops and attitude, weak in theory: one night our singer/rythm guitarist took off in a jam in the key of E, in which we seldom played. Our young Jedi announced that he didn't know any leads in E, to which we replied "Play your D lead up two frets".....to his amazement it worked!


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## Luke98

Help, im drowning in a sea of theory.


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## Warren

washburned said:


> A few years ago I played in a band with a young guitarist, strong on chops and attitude, weak in theory: one night our singer/rythm guitarist took off in a jam in the key of E, in which we seldom played. Our young Jedi announced that he didn't know any leads in E, to which we replied "Play your D lead up two frets".....to his amazement it worked!


Exactly, thank good we don't play piano.


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## I_cant_play

I'm just wondering, is there a CAGED analogue for minor chords? Cause the same way you can move the open chord shapes up and down the neck you can do with minor chords like Am Em Dm. Where do the minor chords fit into the CAGED?


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## wnpgguy

I_cant_play said:


> I'm just wondering, is there a CAGED analogue for minor chords?


yup, not only Maj and min but it includes aug, dim, sev, dim7, aug7, minor 7 flat five, dom7 etc..


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## Warren

I_cant_play said:


> I'm just wondering, is there a CAGED analogue for minor chords? Cause the same way you can move the open chord shapes up and down the neck you can do with minor chords like Am Em Dm. Where do the minor chords fit into the CAGED?


Flatten the thirds in the 5 basic chord shapes? Remember you don't have to play all the notes if the stretch is too big. 3 notes make the chord (root, 3rd & 5th), if you're only playing minor triad. Or if you're playing with a bass player drop the root. So, for example if you're playing the "Cm" shape as a barred chord say at Dm (moved up 2 frets) I'd drop the highest F (high E string 2nd fret) or I wouldn't play the D (A string 5th fret),depending on the situation, to get rid of the stretch.


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## I_cant_play

Warren said:


> Flatten the thirds in the 5 basic chord shapes? Remember you don't have to play all the notes if the stretch is too big. 3 notes make the chord (root, 3rd & 5th), if you're only playing minor triad. Or if you're playing with a bass player drop the root. So, for example if you're playing the "Cm" shape as a barred chord say at Dm (moved up 2 frets) I'd drop the highest F (high E string 2nd fret) or I wouldn't play the D (A string 5th fret),depending on the situation, to get rid of the stretch.


ah so more generally the idea is to use the 5 major chords and modify them by changing the intervals in the chords in order to obtain other chords (minor, diminished etc.)? So in a sense the CAGED chords are a starting point and then by modifying them you get the others (that's one way of looking at it I suppose)?


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## Warren

I_cant_play said:


> ah so more generally the idea is to use the 5 major chords and modify them by changing the intervals in the chords in order to obtain other chords (minor, diminished etc.)? So in a sense the CAGED chords are a starting point and then by modifying them you get the others (that's one way of looking at it I suppose)?


That's my guess, I read some of the web stuff available and it says the same thing. I think this is a very linear (piano) way of thinking. By piano I mean you start with a major (all the white keys) and add black ones for the appropriate key. Guitar is a matrix. It's different than piano, so we don't have to do the "it's C major with a flat 3rd and flat 7" to get C minor. We can move C major up the neck to E major and there you have it.

The best or easiest way is redundant, there are no shortcuts, so whatever you understand is the easiest road, keep plugging, it all becomes second nature after a while no matter how you start out.


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## dolphinstreet

I never really been a big fan of CAGED myself. One big hurdle for guitar players is how to learn the notes all over the fret board. Maybe CAGED can be helpful for some people in that regard, but personally I enourage students to learn the notes on the fretboard by memorizing them one at a time. Whatever method works best for the person learning, I'd say.


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## wnpgguy

dolphinstreet said:


> Maybe CAGED can be helpful for some people in that regard, but personally I enourage students to learn the notes on the fretboard by memorizing them one at a time. Whatever method works best for the person learning, I'd say.



I find what may work for me may not be at all what works for others, that is quite true, however I find the opposite true for memorization. Learning the keys one at a time to me is useless as all that information presented isn't weaved into my mind, instead it is just presented linearly in single dots with no resemblence to one another. 

Without core ideas and foundations, creating a web of knowledge that evolves based on those ideas, I'm drowing in a sea of theory I can't apply.


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## dolphinstreet

Here's a good exercise: grab your guitar, decide on a note, let's say Eb for example. Now, as quickly as you can, try and find that note on each string, including the octave (above or below). Do that a few times and take a break. Then come back to it, and do the same thing again. Pick a new note and repeat the process. 

The point is for the process of finding any note to become automatic, so you don't have to think, in order to find the notes. It takes time to get this all down, but it's well worth it. If CAGED helps to learn the notes as well, by all means use it. Both these techniques are just that, techniques for learning. They are just vehicles for getting you to where you want to be.


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## snoglobe

Warren said:


>




As a basement dwelling novice, CAGED is something I want to explore. Though I think I have to find some resource books or sit down with a guitar teacher. You're diagram makes as much sense to me as a DNA strand, in fact, that's what I thought it was in the first place, or one of those complex carbon-based molecules my high school chem teacher would scrawl on the board.


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## Warren

snoglobe said:


> As a basement dwelling novice, CAGED is something I want to explore. Though I think I have to find some resource books or sit down with a guitar teacher. You're diagram makes as much sense to me as a DNA strand, in fact, that's what I thought it was in the first place, or one of those complex carbon-based molecules my high school chem teacher would scrawl on the board.


After 40 years of guitar, and trying to find a method for myself that would help me simplify complex jazz harmony, which originally sounded like a foreign language to me, I now draw these little pictures for myself, before the little pictures I could figure it out as standard notation but it was very tedious to move it to the fretboard. I don't use CAGED (well actually I do, just not on purpose), I do know how it works. 

Sorry, I figured someone might get something out of the diagram but I guess because it's not tab or standard notation it's hard to get your head around, like I said before it's just the guitar fretboard mirror imaged for a right handed player.

CAGED, as a method of learning the fretboard, and the relationships between intervals and chords works great. It's not easy, it's complex. So yes, find a guitar teacher that knows it and uses it as a teaching tool.

Good Luck


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## marshallman

Seriously guys, anybody that wants to learn the caged method correctly, go buy Fretboard Logic. I've used this book for the last couple of years, and it's a great study tool.

The best part about this method, is that there is no guesswork or rote memorization for learning to play in any key.

With the 5 basic shapes, you'll see that you can build any chord, scale or arpeggio in any possible way (min, aug, dim, dom 7th, minor 7th flat 5, etc....)


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## Mooh

The March 2008 issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine has an article regarding the CAGED system. FYI.

Peace, Mooh.


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## shad

marshallman said:


> Seriously guys, anybody that wants to learn the caged method correctly, go buy Fretboard Logic. I've used this book for the last couple of years, and it's a great study tool.
> 
> The best part about this method, is that there is no guesswork or rote memorization for learning to play in any key.
> 
> With the 5 basic shapes, you'll see that you can build any chord, scale or arpeggio in any possible way (min, aug, dim, dom 7th, minor 7th flat 5, etc....)


Hi marshallman, I'm interested i reading about this, I looked up the Fretboard Logic book at Chapters and there are three volumes, can you tell me which one you have?

Thanks,


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## marshallman

shad said:


> Hi marshallman, I'm interested i reading about this, I looked up the Fretboard Logic book at Chapters and there are three volumes, can you tell me which one you have?
> 
> Thanks,


Sure, it's the Special Edition one, Vols. 1 & 2 combined. Here's a link :

http://www.amazon.ca/Fretboard-Logi...bs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203968049&sr=8-1


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## wnpgguy

Anyone have the 3rd volume? (I herd there was one). I've got one and two and am glad to have them. If your not sure to get the first or second, get both. There definatly a keeper.


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## marshallman

wnpgguy said:


> Anyone have the 3rd volume? (I herd there was one). I've got one and two and am glad to have them. If your not sure to get the first or second, get both. There definatly a keeper.


I'm going to buy it soon. I'm almost done with vol.2, and am interested to continuing this course.


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