CAGED for thick guitar player!

Ok so I’ve learnt the CAGED shapes and C major scale and can join them up all over the neck, how would i go about playing the G major scale all over the neck using the five shapes, I’m betting no one can help me I’m just way too thick to understand it ffs.
Or a link to a caged for idiots resource, believe me I’ve watched loads but it just makes me more confused.

The coloured bits there are only outlining the G Major chord and the different positions you can play it on.

With the G Major scales it’s made up of different chords though.

G Am Bm C D Em F#dim. You can play any of these chords over that scale (there’s others, but ignore those for the time being.

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Start thinking of these Chords as Roman numerals though, becauses it’s a moveble system (that’s the secret to being able to play in any key.)

G – I Am – ii Bm – iii C – IV D – V Em – vi F#dim – vii.

The Chord pattern of IMaj iimin iiimin IVMaj VMaj vimin viiDim is common too across all major scales. (Although ignore this if it’s too complex, but it’s how you should start thinking of them.)

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So back to the G major scale.

Basically you are playing chord progressions.

So concentrate building chords off of each position.

I’ll give you a clue and do the V chord for you. (You can bounce between the I and the V to start, once you are confident, try and figure out the VI chord for yourself. I-VI-V (145 you might have heard of it.) will get you going).

So when playing the V chord, the Orange notes are the root, green is the 3rd note and yellow ith the 5th note (A chord is made up of 3 notes, R 3rd 5th, these are the nice notes when you are playing over a chord, but you can use the other ones, these are the notes where you want to settle, the Root note of a chord is stronger than the 3rd and the 5th of the chord)

Play 4 bars over the I chord, and 4 bars over the V chord and see if you can start to feel the difference. (Concentrate on resting on the root note of a particular chord at the end of your phasing.)

Anyhow, dunno if I’ve helped or hindered there. 😆 Any questions ask away!

FYI a note on chord building

Gmajor scale notes =

G A B C D E F#

You build chords with every other note (Root – 3 – 5)

so in the G major scale you can build

G B D = G Major
A C E = A Minor
B D F# = B Minor
C E G = C Major
D F# A = D Major
E G B = E Minor
F# A C = F# Diminished.

Thank you, I’ll give this some attention later and hopefully it will help me, i really appreciate the effort, if you’re ever in North Wales i owe you a drink. 😊

No worries, hope I’ve helped, any questions ask away, I’m sure others will be able to contribute too.

takes a bit to get your head round, worth sticking with though, and as I said figure out the roman numerals and the numbers for chord tones and understand the difference. It’s the building blocks for the movable system (Which is quite easy once you get it, but it takes a while to get there.)

btw you said you know the C one, have a look and compare(to the first image I posted), see if you can see the pattern repeating. Hint, the entire scale just shifts left or right. That’s how you change keys.

The Root note of the I Chord is the moveable point that will tell you what key it is.

I absolutely hate those diagrams with the dots ^^^. Obviously they work well for some people but I remember being tortured by them for years. As soon as I figured out that I was better off using muscle memory instead of the dot patterns, I was away.

My view on CAGED:
The whole point is that there are different places on the neck that you can play the same chords. Although you chose G, it’s easier to explain starting on C, since CAGED starts with the letter C. For me, it was useful to learn how to play the chords in the different positions.

So you can play a:
C chord using the open C shape (x-3-2-0-1-0)
C chord using the open A shape (x-3-5-5-5-3)
C chord using the open G shape (8-7-5-5-5-8)*
C chord using the open E shape (8-10-10-9-8-8)
C chord using the open D shape (x-x-10-12-13-12)**

Once you know where all those chords are, link the chords to the pentatonic scale patterns. E.g. The G shape (if you do the full barre) outlines the minor pentatonic 1st position quite well.

Extra details, feel free to ignore:
* Awkward AF, don’t actually try and play all of this at once as a chord. But hopefully you can visualise where the notes fall.
** Also pretty difficult to play as a chord, but you can just leave the high e string out. (or try the sus2 version: x-x-10-12-13-10)

As a guitarist I learned all sorts of different ways to memorize the various chords in a given key. What really helped was learning barre chords, specifically the two most common, the E shaped barre with its roots on the E string, and the A shaped barre with its roots on the A string.

You can actually figure out chord progressions in absolutely any given key by looking for a pattern, and all you have to learn is the notes on the E string. (I also play bass, which means this becomes a fundamental part of my playing)

Lets start with G major as that’s been referenced above (and because it’s also a common key in many, many songs) The root of G major is of course G, the third fret on the bottom E string. The G major scale follows exactly the same pattern as any other scale. So, tone, tone, semitone, tone, tone, tone, semitone. The chords in the key of G major follow exactly the same pattern as the notes in the scale. , so G, A, B, C , D , E, F# and back to G. (don’t forget there’s only a single fret difference between B & C and E & F….. BUT, you don’t actually need to know this to play in G!

This next bit takes a bit more theory memory, but once you’ve learned it, it’ll fall naturally. The chords in the key also follow a pattern , which is Major, minor, minor, Major, Major, minor, diminished. If we use seosamh’s roman numerals to denote the chord sequence we see I, ii, iii, IV, V, vi, Dim. So in G major the chords are I-G, ii-Am, iii-Bm, IV-C, V-D, vi-Em, dim-F#dim.

Remember I said we were going to play all in barre chords? If we do, we don’t actually have to remember where the root of (for example) an E minor is on the A string, because we’ll find it using a pattern, and all we have to remember is where we played the G root.

So, the first chord is a G major, and we’re playing that with an E major shape barred at the third fret, the G root. we then move that barre shape up two frets (to the A) and remove the middle finger so we’re playing an E minor barre shape, to play chord ii, A minor. The next chord in the key is iii, Bminor. So we simply shift that E minor barre shape two frets higher to play Bm with its root on fret 7. .

So that’s the first 3 chords out of the way. Next is the clever bit, and what has shaped blues and rock songs since the dawn of time…… the IV chord. We remember it’s major, and we remember that the first 4 strings of the guitar are tuned in fourths. So we go back to our G root, and on the next string across is the fourth note in the scale, which is also the root of the fourth or IV chord, C. As we’re playing the root on the A string at fret 3 we need an A shape barre chord, so we then play a C major chord. Next, to find that all important V chord we simply move two frets higher, and play an A major barre chord with its root on fret 5, -D major.

Conveniently, the next chord in the key is the vi chord, (the relative minor….) which is to be found two frets higher along the A string. So we move the barre chord two frets above the D major, and change to an A minor shape to play an E minor.

For the time being we won’t bother with the diminished chord, as you aren’t going to come across many songs that use it, but for reference its root is two frets higher up the A string on F#

But what you can see is a pattern that has shaped music as we know it. The vast majority of 3 chord songs in blues and rock play using I, IV,V progression. You can start absolutely anywhere on the E string and play a root I chord, shift the root to the next string across to find the IV chord, and then two frets up to find the V chord. To play like this you don’t even need to know the names of the root notes!

Reverse engineer this, and you can identify all of the chords in any key by counting frets up from the root on the E string. Start with the root, then count up two frets to find the ii chord, two more frets to find the iii chord, back to the root and across one string to find the IV, up two frets to find the V, up two more to find the vi, and two more to find the diminished. Even if you still only play in CAGED chords this method of locating the root on the E string and counting up and across means you can identify the chords in a key. As you do so you’ll be memorising more and more notes and recognising more and more patterns. Have fun!

Cheers guys, this is brilliant, i think my problem is I’m trying to make all this work in a nutshell but there’s a bit more thought needs to go into it, i have no problems with barre chords and can play lots of shapes but couldn’t tell you what they are, all this information is starting to make sense, thanks guys, musicians are such a generous bunch, perhaps one day I’ll be able to call myself a musician. 😁

OMG I’ve got it, virtuosity awaits. 👍😊😁🙂😋😜🤯
My wife is also relieved that I’ve got it, the poor lass it either listening to a guitar, me talking about guitar or listening to someone else playing the guitar. 🤣
Off to the pub now to celebrate. 🍻🍺🎸🎶🎸🎶🎸

Nice to hear, now for the test! 😉 Explain back to us what you’ve got?

#Controversial: As a guitarist I say stop learning theory using hacks to make it guitar friendly. Buy a really cheap midi keyboard and learn theory on that, it’s linear makes more sense immediately and once you get it is translatable to all other western instruments. The only guitar caveat is learning where ALL of the notes are!

I’ve been playing for 30 years and I have to admit that CAGED system baffles me. IMO learn the barre chords as someone mentioned above, and learn the modes of the major scale. If you know the major scale you already know the modes, just start & finish on a different note. Then learn the moveable mode shapes (basically pentatonic shapes with additional notes). And link it all up.

You’re not thick OP, I’ve been playing for ~30 years or so too and that CAGED system baffles the bejebus out of me too, although to be fair I’ve plateaued* and only have very, very basic theory knowledge and am more of a three-chord noise maker and still (still!) don’t know where all the notes are on the neck!

* at everything 🤣

I also find the CAGED system illogical. The C and D are the same aren’t they?

My guitar teacher says just strum the chords to a tune you’re familiar with, but at a different part of the neck than you usually do.

Also, the intro to “Run Like Hell” is good fun to practice some alternative triad placings.

mickyfinn
Full Member
#Controversial: As a guitarist I say stop learning theory using hacks to make it guitar friendly. Buy a really cheap midi keyboard and learn theory on that, it’s linear makes more sense immediately and once you get it is translatable to all other western instruments. The only guitar caveat is learning where ALL of the notes are!

would defo agree with this, a keyboard just makes so much more sense than the fretboard.

BigJohn
Full Member
I also find the CAGED system illogical.

All it really is is a way to map out the major scale on the the fretboard.

Now I’m getting the hang of it i would say the major scale is a bit of a red herring for caged, i probably would have picked it up better if i hadn’t learnt the major scale first and knew moving the major shapes could get all the different keys.
If you just learn the five caged shapes and link them up then it’s the first stepping stone to knowing the chord notes which to me is the heart of melodic soloing.
Learning caged is a massive leap in becoming familiar with the neck, I’m having lots of lightbulb on moments.