I'm a guitar teacher with many years of experience both teaching and giging in bands. My goal here is to share the info that I have as well as help guitarists move through ruts or find inspiration.
I write TABs and notation for every video I upload so you can spend more than the 5-8 minutes in the video on a challenging or difficult subject. All those TABs can be found on my Patreon page. Please consider supporting me there if the content I produce inspires or helps you.
My deepest hope is that what I present and publish here is helpful for some guitarists. If it is then any effort I put in is worth it to me. I hope you find this channel interesting, and if you do, please consider subscribing.
Thanks for breaking it down! Clear explanation of how the chord shapes progress, how to refinger each and to remember the roots of each one. Great reference to help me step up from practicing open chords for the millionth time.
@@robt6127 yeah, this is going to change the way you look at the fretboard forever! But keep those open chords fresh, they will ALWAYS COME IN HANDY!!!!
So, why? What's the point? So I can play an A chord 5 different places on the neck? Is that all there is to this? I feel like I'm missing some big ah ha moment.
@@daft4682 the CAGED system is simply a way to expose and catalog chord structures across the fretboard. If you already know the fretboard extremely well, this will indeed seem like old news to you. Understanding the fretboard being freedom to play anything you want, anyWHERE you want. CAGED helps bring that understanding.
@@curiousguitarist hmmm. I'm honestly not trying to be difficult here. I've been trying to understand this stuff for 30 years. I'm still 99% lost and I have seriously attempted to understand it a few times. "expose chord structures across the fretboard". I don't understand why. Is it simply so I can play a C chord at a different location? What I mainly can't wrap my head around, when someone is noodling or riffing around, what are they doing in their head. Are they following a pre-set pattern? Are they honestly taking a C shape and working it backward up the fretboard so they can quickly nail another C chord at the 15th fret? Because it seems like they are moving too fast to be doing all that calculation in their heads. Right now all I do is work up and down 1 position of a scale. It's either a major, a minor, a pentatonic, or a blues. Not sure which. I have seen the pattern I play shown as all of the above. There is nothing consistent I can find about this instrument. I want so badly to understand it and be able to play it. The only way I can think of to riff around on this instrument is to blindly memorize tab, but I struggle with this. I have spent a ton of money on music gear over the years, wanting to figure it out. I would pay someone $1000 who could make it make sense. I liked your video on stages of competency. I'm forever stuck in phase 2. Knowing I don't know, but any attempt to listen to lessons or theory or instruction, almost without fail, I'm completely lost in the first minute then it's just frustrating.
Great Tritone Lesson! My dad (a non musician, but a huge music fan) could even recognize the sound of it, by the end of the lesson. And I learned a few new things, too! Thanks! Subbed!
@@a.daniels6164 I would not suggest a book, I would suggest you start with the major scale intervals and go from there. There’s no big secret, just the distances between notes!
Maybe it would be more helpful for us laymen if you mentioned the B string anomaly every time you crossed it and also why you were playing open strings when you ran out of frets. Otherwise a really helpful video
Hay Chris! Been experimenting with this and Love it! Found a new variation, pick two strings and do the same ascending and descending as described here only on those two strings.. its really helping map out the caged boxes! Bit of a teeth grinder at first but its a goody.. Thank you for the inspiration 🙏🕊️✨
I’m an old sax player so I only understand scales that start on the root note . Thats easier for me because then the shapes are the same and the scale is based on what note i start on . I couldn’t get with the 5 pentatonic patterns ??
@@galacticfreds5339 yes, there are a few exclusive videos on my Patreon page that have more rhythm drills like these, and a bunch of studies in The Studio that feature subdivisions as well.
Very cool lesson. You are a great teacher, not babbling about random nonsense. Telling us how to actually apply the concepts you teach to the neckbeard! Keep up the good work man.
Haaaa! More scale finger-puzzles to solve! All joking aside, I see the value of designing and deploying scale sequences beyond mere “dexterity exercises”. Used “thoughtfully”, and actually deploying sequences hand-in-hand with chord changes in mind, can make for interesting solo and melody ideas!
My guitar teacher taught me this and called it the CAGED system. Unfortunately, I didn't realize that this isn't "the system." The system is connecting those chord shapes to various scale boxes. It only took a couple of decades for me to realize.
Great presentation, btw. I’ve grown up around music but I didn’t play guitar until recently. I never had a good grasp of the CAGED system but figured out what you’re showing here after a while teaching myself guitar. I can’t imagine figuring this out without the music background I had. Great info and presented without a lot of fluff and unnecessary commentary.
Very unique trick. Especially helpful if you already know all the positions and want to find different starting points. I'd say the only barrier left is to memorize where the roots are, otherwise this trick can be hard to call forth during a performance.
OK, self taught player here (initially, anyway). I don't understand what this 'system' is meant to be. I've seen explanations like this one, and others, and there's this hype about a CAGED 'system', but all I see is a set of standard (and some rather impractical) bar chord shapes. That enunciates the same principle as the basic, beginner level bar chord techniques I learned 40 years ago from a beginner's book. Root note of the E shape bar chord is on the 6th string, thus the name: root 6 bar chord. Same with the root 5, etc. To the extent there's a system here, it's just the relationship of intervals between strings. Again, this is something one learns when learning how tune up by ear, and by learning your first 12 bar in A. ("Oh wow, the root of the I chord is on the 5th string, the root of IV chord is on the 4th string, and the root the V chord is on the 6th. So the IV chord is 5 frets higher than the I chord, and the V chord is 5 frets lower...or 7 frets higher, depending on how I look at it...that means I could play that here, too. Actually, I could play that up here, as well. Or here. I wonder how many ways I can think of to play an E?" And so on.) So the CAGED things promulgates a set of standard bar chords. That move. But that's like saying water is wet: bar chords are DESIGNED to move, so what's the insight?
@@Splattle101 sounds like none for you. The “CAGED chord shape relationship thingie” is a way to visualize all the things you’ve mentioned. So I would suggest you never think about it again and move directly to triads and scale relationships. The 40 years you’ve spent on the fretboard have given you a familiarity that bypasses the benefit of CAGED. I see no benefit for you in taking the time to study it. Thanks for the comment and views though, I appreciate it!
So for the 1-4-5 blues, my strategy has been to play the scale for the chord I'm on. For example in A, when it goes to the 4/D, I hit a D and then play the scale for D where that D I found is the root note. Same for E, switch to the scale where the E I landed on is the root. I use the pattern closest to where I already am. It sounds right. Is there anything technically wrong with doing that?
This is exactly at my skill level right now. I know the pentatonic scales, I can hear where the roots are, and I'm trying to play along to blues backing tracks while sticking the landing for each chord change. So I would love for this to be the first in a series of videos that gets progressively harder.
@@TheAncientColossus well on a 2 octave fretboard you can get an octave above any note from the 12th fret or below. But in general once you reach the highest instance of a note on the fretboard you must choose to move DOWN an octave instead. Hope that helps!
@@curiousguitarist Were you moving up or down the octave in this video for each three-string combination? And how did you know that was an octave in this video?
@@TheAncientColossus I have all the octaves memorized. I explain this in the video here… ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-M6UAgi5nPyE.htmlsi=2SBEq-u2K5s4b1Ig
@@TheAncientColossus yeah, I mean if you really want to understand the thing, you must study. The short cuts won't get you lasting results. And for what it's worth, it's not that hard, especially with a little guidance. Watch that octaves video and see iof you can get the pattern down. All of the CAGED system is inside there, all the pentatonic scales, every triad inversion...it's pretty formative.
Thank you, Chris! This lesson really helps with understanding the shapes and moving them. Made it much easier to see how it’s moving on the fretboard. Appreciate it.
Been doing last weeks sequencing all week. Im amazed how quickly its stuck! So im going to chuck this one in my routine this week! Thank you Chris! Rock on!!! 💥✨🎸😎
Thanks Chris! This is the method I really needed to visualize and use better use CAGED in my lead playing. Once again your logical approach cleared some blind spots for me. Thanks for always shining the spotlight where it needs to be!
@@stevebeatty5218 you bet! As you’ll probably see CAGED is a great visualization tool, but the chord shapes are bulky and some are difficult to use. After to really get this down, dive into triads because they are all attached here, but are much easier to play and more flexible in a musical application
@@curiousguitarist Thanks Chris - I love seeing the various triad shapes in so many positions on the fretboard. Really opens things up and creates so many options! Thanks again!
@@danfranks8093 pentatonic none the less eh? Just shift the root to the note that is up three frets and this entire lesson works for major too! Hope you enjoyed this one, Dan!
CHRIS, you can do the same lesson but do the drills on phrases that stick the landing on the 3rd or 5th instead of the root. This changes the Scale gravity notes leading back to either the 3rd or 5th. When making phrases landing on the 3rd or 5th, I'm guessing its called 3rd tonality or 5th tonality? David Gilmour uses both often avoids landing on the root because he is going for a different tonality. Peter Green often lands his phrasing on the M6 to sound sweeter, again not sure if this is called M6 tonality in phrasing. Try to make a phrasing 101 lesson.
