Don't Get Stuck With CAGED 

Studying CAGED for the last 6 months has really allowed me to get a good visual of where things are at on the fretboard. It’s certainly not an end all be all, but it’s golden for a beginner trying to figure out fretboard mechanics.

There is value in ALL of the different systems. Learn as much as you can. Use what moves you. Keep pickin'. 😊😊😊

I don't get the controversies with guitar. Three notes per string, CAGED, music theory. I think it's best to try to learn as much as you can, and use what you like. Everything is at our fingertips tips now, so take advantage of it.

Triads are my religion. I learned them the good old fashioned way. Writing out all the notes of the major scale in every single key onto each keys own individual piece of paper, then highlighting all the roots 3rds and 5ths and then memorizing the shapes and connecting them, I also memorized where all the roots and 3rds were in each inversion and by default know where 5th is. I already knew what you get when you move a third around or fifth around etc. Triads changed my life man.

Anyone who would purport to have beef with CAGED doesn't understand it, and shouldn't be trusted. What is there to dislike? Do these people not like being able to visualize the fingerboard using easy, common chord shapes? Who are these people? My only beef with CAGED is that it has two letters two many. The "A" is actually just part of the "G" shape, and likewise the "D" is part of "C". So it's really just CEG. You, sir, sound marvelous as always and it's always great to hear your thoughts on matters. Peace, brotha. :)

That guitar sounds amazing!

CAGED is just one perspective to the ultimate issue - seeing scales and chord tones across the guitar fretboard. CAGED is brilliant at breaking the tangle of scales and chord tones up into 5 digestible vertical positions, or 'boxes', connected to chord shapes we're already familiar with. The only real 'trouble' is not learning these 5 shapes well enough to connect them smoothly and freely move between them. 3 notes per string establishes more of a diagonal scalar template, which helps with the issue of moving between positions on the guitar smoothly, but doesn't connect to common chord tones/shapes as intuitively. IMO the real key is to learn both, see how they relate, and also learn to play your scales and arpeggios across one string at a time. CAGED will show you where the vertical positions and chord tones are, 3nps is like an escalator that helps you smoothly move diagonally through positions, and single-string playing will allow you to freely connect the two systems

I think you explained the reason this is important Well, and clearly you're studied but I find the thing that's hard for people to understand(and to teach) are not only the why? But the how? I found a teacher that was great at explaining how these systems work to me and all of a sudden they made so much sense and were mich easier to understand. Taking someone through the process of how you learned/remember what you know is so valuable

Great video and advice and beautiful playing Rhett.

Thank you, Rhett, for continuing to make videos like this. This is very helpful.

Great explanation, beautiful guitar and awesome tone! Fun to listen to just to hear the noodling around

This was lovely. I am at the point where I am experimenting a lot with these concepts and learning more. Thanks for this Rhett!

While I’m not a big fan of systematic approaches (especially CAGED), your breakdown was one of the best this old goat has seen. And that guitar was dripping with sublime tone. Well done sir.

Nice well thought out explanation to adding new options to established systems. Well done, Rhett...

If people would actually read the book that was written correctly by Bill Edwards, then people wouldn’t have this problem. I believe he was the first to write it. It’s like everyone reads the first book of a three part series and then tries to teach it. The book is called Fretboard Logic and it is a complete series explaining the entire system and then shows how to use it in context. Most complaints that I have heard about CAGED is that it is incomplete but it is not. The people that say this have only read the first book and regurgitate their limited knowledge. Also, people seem to think that it is a system that was created to help people map out the fretboard. This is false. This system was created by design when 6 string instruments tuning was determined what it should be, or should I say the intervals between strings were predetermined with this system in mind to navigate the fretboard and make chords, and scales, and arpeggios. Bill Edwards is the only person to write a book explaining the system in its entirety.

Great lesson. That first inversion stuff melts right into my soul.

Solid man! This perspective should be a goal for everyone - well done!

Great stuff. You explained perfectly what I was doing without realising already. Looking at the shapes and trying different inversions and positions.

If you tune to standard tuning... The notes are always in the same spot. CAGED, Three Notes Per String, Five Positions.. etc. It's always the same notes, in the same place. There are many ways to "view" the fretboard. I feel if you know the neck, you know more than one way to describe, view or talk about it.. Great video, Rhett.

read CAGED in more logical order as EDCAG ... just this helped me a lot to hear

Thank you for this. Wonderfully presented, simple ideas with practice guidance. Respect.

I’m just glad that you’re teaching me something that I can use and thanks

Just picked guitar back up after a 10 year hiatus. Only been playing for seven months but it’s awesome to learn all these different systems getting there slowly but that’s the beauty of playing guitar. Awesome video thank you.👍🌟🌟🌟🌟🌟🎼

Very informative session.Thank you.

This is the first video I have seen that has made this idea interesting to me. Well done Mr. Shull.

Great lesson! Triads and arpeggios made me a better lead player. Loved your tone!

Love all your video's Rhett, but these educational ones I come back to time and time again (that and the Great Gig in the Sky recording). Thanks for all the knowledge.

Great video. Thanks Rhett 🙏

I just want to say I have been watching your videos for about 2 years now and I have improved tremendously since. I also got the barebones course and that alone has helped me fill in gaps that I have had the past 12-13 years I have been playing guitar. The CAGED portion of the BB course helped me from playin only open and bar chords to playing chords throughout the guitar neck.

I've been doing some of this unknowingly. But this vid really did get me connecting some dots. I thoroughly enjoyed it!

Superb lesson, thank you Rhett

Gorgeous guitar. It's lush visually and tonally. Love that thing.

Back in the day, before CAGED was “a thing”, advanced guitar players would have figured out that a big step towards improvising freely was to learn the scale patterns and arpeggio that “fit around” each of the commonly used moveable chord shapes. I think of CAGED as a logical system for cataloguing and organizing those related chord, arpeggio, and scale shapes.

being self taught and spending days upon weeks discovering these things on my own, I'm glad this puts some method to my madness. that said, I don't think I'll change my method of learning, which is sort of in reverse from most people. thanks for this post. makes sense.

I think the problem with CAGED is that we see it and use it as a system where in my opinion it should be more of a guide. It might be semantics but as an educator I find semantics are important in teaching/learning process. This was a good explanation of how to use it like a guide, nice work Rhett

Maybe it's me, but I never thought of triad inversions up and down the neck as the CAGED system, though guitarists keep saying it is. I learned CAGED as a single note scale system. Triad inversions don't need a name - there's only one way to play them, so there can't be any other 'system.' Whereas in scales, you can play them 3 notes per string, as some players do, or in position boxes. With boxes, there's always another box up the neck, and boxes overlap, so you can move a couple of frets to go to the next box and the notes are under your fingers. Now - the major triad inversions and the major scale positions overlap. They have to! It's just a matter of memorizing where the notes are all over the neck and connecting them to set fingering pattens so that you don't have to use a random finger to get the next note you want to play. Rhett can do it, so it doesn't matter what he calls it, but I think that both he and Beato muddy the waters when they talk about CAGED.

Hey Rhett, Did you get a new guitar when I met you at Sweetwater this week? You were playing one that was similar to this one.

I have slowly worked on improving my knowledge of Caged and the inversions of each chord in each position. I think it is a gamed changer and learning it has given me tools to allow me to "Color" a song's chord progression in a way that fits for the songs mood.

Good info. It's great that you have such a wonderful business teaching guitar. Continued success with it through the coming years Rhett! :)

When I was in music school, my guitar teacher taught me this form of understanding triads in 3 string fragments, but I never thought in the way you just did, thak you so much 🎵

Fantastic explanation. Thank you

So much great playing in this video. I wanted more.

Nice video.... and that guitar sounds great too!

You could not have picked a better sounding Guitar to do this video with. This video has a wealth of information and will probably get more views than you can imagine. Many repeated views as well. Thank you.

Came back to guitar after a 10 year hiatus, glad I found your channel Rhett. I was watching you play some vintage guitars at a shop in an old video and I was inspired to get up and go find a local shop. I did and played some wonderful vintage strats (very badly) but it was great. This created a new problem though as I continued to hang out at the shop and play this nice gear, now my 16 year old epiphone Les Paul and solid state fender frontman just weren’t cutting it sound wise. Picked up a modded blues jr for $300 and a 2015 American standard Strat for $800!! What an improvement, now to get some real pickups in the epiphone so I can hear those sweet Les Paul sounds.

Those riffs sound SOOO pretty, especially the one at 2:46.

I bought Rhett’s CAGED course and it’s awesome. This is such a good addition to the course. 😀😀😀

Despite all my rage I'm still just a rat in a cage! Cheers Rhett!!

I love this video. I have played guitar for a long time but my playing still sounds one of three things: 1) song I learned; 2) a panatonic blues riff; or 3) boring power chords. I want what you are playing - to understand what you are doing. I memorized the CAGE chords but haven’t figured out the next step to make it musical.

Nice lesson. Thanks

"Think outside the box", good one Rhett !

I've always been a player that didn't think you had to all 5 or 6 notes in a chord, when playing with another guitar player. It can get a muddy. But this gave me some new ideas.

Each system is just a perspective from which you can view the instrument. Nothing says you have to limit yourself to one perspective. That’s like telling yourself it’s only ok to speak one language; or it’s only ok to read, but not do math. It’s all knowledge.

Fantastic video! I think what is most important to point out about the CAGED system is that the "boxes" does not equal fingerings. The guitar is tuned in apentatonic scale, but more importantly contain a minor and a major chord. The pesky third between the 2nd and 3rd string is there to make the guitar by design reaaaally good at dealing with Triads. And since the tuning can be said to be designed to handle triads really well, triads and pentatonic scales, and we think today music very much in terms of scales and triads, they become very useful in organizing the "matrix" of the fretboard. The issues you address and attribute to the CAGED system, i feel stems from the fact the CAGED system is usually taught and described in a way that can create the impression that it is fingerings. So the discussions tend to be framed as "x fingering system vs caged". The classical guitarist and composer Fernando Sor wrote a method that pressed the importance of "understanding" music, rather than just "playing thenotes with your fingers", and described that he viewed the fretboard in "figured bass figures". In this sense you could say he describes a version of the caged system, but describes a way of thinking harmony that is not oriented after an idea of triads and inversions, but how consonant intervals relate to the bass note. Instead of triads his "CAGED system" relates to movements in voice leading, as something dynamic. To me the CAGED system, is at its most usefull in musical contexts, how the different shapes interact with each other, the C shape of a C major chord overlap/interact with the A shape of a minor or example, musical understanding like voiceleading for example plays a role in how the CAGED system work in relation to your musical understanding and decisions in context. If you see a C shape major triad, its less mental load to find the ninths in the position over X bassnote, because they have to be right below the thirds. The connective part is the musical understanding that you discuss in the video, that connects the CAGED system to what think is a separate issue, that is, issues regarding fingering. Three notes per string, might bring you upwards in pitch as well, as you go diagonally up the fretboard. Two notes per string applied to a major scale brings you up in pitch, up in strings, but downwards on the fretboard. What fingering you do will affect the sound, and what you can physically play. Classical guitarists are very particular on this, because the timbre of the strings can be so different, and thus have to make many musical choices regarding where on the fretboard, or how a phrase is affected based on when in the phrase you changed a string. Thats why you can often see classical guitarists play a lot on the same string in a phrase when it would be easier to play the same notes in position. Musical choices inform how to tackle issues in fingering. The CAGED system informs your organizing of the fretboard, and is organized by your understanding of theory, spesifically triads.

Great ideas thanks. Dig that guitar too.

Very insightful!

I just think that being called 'CAGED' makes it seem like a static system, something like cowboy chords part II. I've being using it for years as a point of reference to find voicings and a different approach to chords. As with anything else, it's as useful as you make it. Nice video Rhett, as always!

Quick shout-out to that guitar. Sounds magical.

Rhett, Thanks for this educational video. By the way - KILLER tone man! And beautiful (new?) Archtop ;)

What a beautiful sounding guitar. And beautiful looking as well!

That guitar sounds spectacular

Excellent vid 🔥🔥

Hi! Nice video, thanks. Which model is this guitar? It's a really beautiful one! Thanks🤙🏼

This was really cool. Sounds awesome. Edwin Woods . Thunder Bay Ontario Canada . Really good advice . Love the channel

Hey I've bought myself a Zephyr also, its a real special instrument great for jazz, also the acoustic sound it surprisingly good, the sustain and overtones are also something I've not heard before !

Finally, a video how to get the best out of the CAGE. And not just bout the pros/cons!!!

😊 Nicely done.

That guitar sounds gorgeous.

I love the sound of that guitar! I was wondering if it's just because of the pickups, or do you have something special in your signal chain?

Thanks for this Rhett I never play to become a player Playing is private and therapetic for me... as well as a journey of discovery I really do think this is a valid and even important tool in the toolbox for someone like me. Hope you are well and I'm off to grab a guitar :)

I remember trying to learn CAGED years ago and getting frustrated. I gave up trying. After some time, I started doing more of a Hendrix/Mayfield/Mayer thing, and realized I was actually applying the system. Now it's the main way I see the fretboard, yet I don't really sit there and say, "this is CAGED." I just needed to see how it applied to what I was playing.

Nice epi 😊

Sold! To the man with the mid life creativity crisis. Thanks Rhett

Dave Gavurin from the Sundays was really good at this, and the fills he did on Wild Horses were just brilliant. All chunks from bigger chords. Then he fell into a black hole never to be heard from again lol.

Good video, I would like to see an overlay showing a tab of how to fret each chord as it can be hard to tell by looking at the video.

I love that guitar it has a beautiful chime

thanks

I gig Rhett’s guitar! Gotta be an Epi. New model? Refin’d oldie? Looks new to me. The pickups are ‘50s New Yorker style and the hump fretboard inlays are from that period too. Hmmm…

I don’t know if I have anything against CAGED per se but…it just feels a bit overhyped to me? If it helps you learn the major triads and inversions over the neck, well good. 👍 Seems a lot of people have learned that very thing without CAGED too so… whatever works for you. Personally it’s just not how I think about it, so CAGED becomes more of a detour than a shortcut for me. 🤷‍♂️ (Also don’t forget to learn minor, diminished and augmented triads and their inversions as well as the notes on the neck.)

Great stuff! But I'm wondering if some folks might have missed the fact that you jumped into dropped-D tuning along about 3:17.

That guitar tone is amazing. Making me jones for a full hollow-body. Is that a Guild?

I learned aspects of CAGED, but it was never called that. I don’t actually think it consciously, but I have used it

Guthrie Trapp teaches a lot on CAGED, if it works for him I’m good with it. Nice vid Rhett!

i play guitar for more than 20 years, in some periods i also managed to work as a pro but i still get lost so easy on the damn fretbard when i get out of my comfort zones xD I've never been able to memorize and get used to it xD

Not quite there but I dig it! 👊🏻

I'm more or less into this stage of my guitar learning curve. In your opinion (as well as other commenters) is it better to focus on one triad at a time and learn the different shapes, or is it better to learn the different shapes in "sections" of the fretboard? At this moment, the concept of CAGED and the different chord shapes seems a bit overwhelming and I don't know how to tackle it

What is that guitar? Sounds beautiful!

Certainly a useful tool to have in the box the guitar rewards those who put the work in 😂 cheers.

Hey quick feedback: As soon as the guitar comes in, there's a strange shift in the audio. Sounds like a phase issue when you listen with headphones. Great video, just thought that might help!

Don't really understand this (yet), but damn that sounds nice.

I dig the Zephyr.

What pickups are those on that guitar?

I need exercises to help me practice and learn these concepts.

Your playing has really progressed over the last year…

I played along with you....i think you would have like it. But i am half the world away in Vienna.... .. .

I think CAGED is great once you learn all the cowboy chords and being able to easily switch between them. I'd also teach a 1-4-5 blues shuffle in E or A first. It might be taught too soon, because honestly I don't see any negatives to learning it.

How did you get this sound on guitar

That guitar looks like a reissue its so clean. Rad find. Those NY pickups sound so retro and rad. What is that model?

That Epiphone is beautiful

Whatever gets you to play and be creative. To me that sounds like saying it's useless to learn any blues if you play metal. Also learning CAGED doesn't necessarily mean you have to play CAGED, but it does teach you how chords work and how the neck in laid out.