Now that’s a bold title if ever there was one, but you’ll be very happy to hear that it isn’t clickbait, it’s 100% true. The CAGED system is one of the most important things you can ever learn on the guitar and opens up your fretboard knowledge, your chordal knowledge, your scalar knowledge, and possibly most importantly… your creativity.
But what is the CAGED system, how do you use it, and why is it so important? Let’s find out, starting with the basics…
What is CAGED?
The CAGED system makes understanding and navigating the guitar fretboard far easier than learning everything in a rote fashion. It is particularly useful for learning the positions of chords and scales across the entire fretboard.
It is based on five of the basic open chord shapes - C, A, G, E, and D. All of these shapes can be barred to create other chords as the shape is moved up and down the fretboard. This is incredibly useful and allows you to play chords and therefore songs anywhere on the fretboard.
However, the true magic of the CAGED system is learning how these shapes interconnect. Once you get that down, the fretboard goes from a large barren wasteland that you rarely explore to a small homely patch where you know where everything is.
CAGED Chords
If you’re reading this, I assume you are advanced enough as a player to know the most important root chords -
A, Am, A7, B7, C, C7, D, Dm, D7, E, Em, E7, and G
You may also know a few barre chords such as F, Fm, B, and Bm. If not, click the links in the chord names you don’t know yet, for some tips and tricks to quickly master those chords.
I’m sure that most of you didn’t notice, but the long list of root chords in the last paragraph only contains five types of chords - A, C, D, E, and G (ignoring the B7). If you rearrange these letters, you get C, A, G, E, and D… or CAGED. This is not a coincidence. The first few barre chords you learn - the F and B chords - are not featured in CAGED, but they come from the CAGED system, so if you are already playing F and B-shaped barre chords, you are already using CAGED. Let me explain…
E becomes F and A becomes B
There are two ways that you could have learned to play a full-barre F chord - either from a chord diagram or TAB or you played an E chord with the second, third, and fourth fingers (instead of the first, second, and third), moved it up one fret, barred the first fret and voila, you have an F chord as shown below:
The same is true of a B or Bm chord, you take an A or Am-shaped chord, play it with your second, third, and fourth fingers (instead of the first, second, and third), move it up two frets, and you have a B or a Bm barre chord.
This is the CAGED system at work. We have used the E shape, moved it up a fret, and created an F chord. If we move it up another two frets it becomes a G chord, and move it up two more frets, it becomes an A chord.
The chord shape remains exactly the same; the position on the neck is the only thing that changes. This leads me nicely to…
How do I know what the chord is called?
Every chord has a root note. If you have learned any song that contains finger or plectrum picking of root chords, you will nearly always start the picking pattern on the root note. For example, if you are going to pick an E chord, your first note will be the open 6th string (Low E string). Again, this is no coincidence, you are starting with that note for a reason; it’s because it’s the root. The 6th string is the Low E string, so it is natural that you pick that note first in any picking pattern of an E chord.
The note that comes after E is F; therefore, if you move the E-shaped chord up one fret and barre on the first fret, the note on the E string is now an F note, and the whole chord is an F chord. As in the previous example, if we now move it up two frets, the note will change from F (1st fret) passed the second fret (F#) up to the G note on the third fret. If you now play an E-shaped chord in this position, it is a G chord. Up two more… passed the G# on the 4th fret and to the A note on the 5th fret, making the E-shaped chord at that position an A chord.
I am assuming that you know the order of notes that exist in music; if not, here they are:
A - A# - B - C - C# - D - D# - E - F - F# - G - G# - and back to A
There are no real tips or tricks to learning this sequence, you just need to learn it. The only technique I use with my students is ‘Buzzy, Buzzy, BEE’ - the BEE represents the notes B and E, which don’t have a sharp.
What about Flats - b?
To keep things simple, I have not included flats in the sequence above. Without overcomplicating things, a flat and a sharp are the same, i.e., an A# is the same as a Bb and a C# is the same as a Db, etc.
Minors, Sevenths, etc.
Now that’s covered, let’s get back to the CAGED chords. You should now be able to play an E-shaped chord on any fret of the fingerboard and name it, for example…
On the 3rd fret - G major chord
On the 5th fret - A major chord
On the 8th fret - C major chord
On the 10th fret - D major chord
On the 12th fret - E major chord (an octave higher than the root E chord)
On the 15th fret - G major chord
This simple concept now means that instead of knowing two chord shapes - the E-shape and the F (although it is also an E-shaped chord) - you can now play 10 new E-shaped chords - F# - G - G# - A - A# - B - C - C# - D - D# - and back to E on the 12th fret!
But there’s more…
You can apply the CAGED system in the same way to the Em-shaped chord. By removing your second finger from any of the E-shaped barre chords, you have the minor version of that chord. For example, play an E-shaped barre on the third fret and you get a G major chord, remove the second finger and the chord becomes minor, making it a G minor chord, as shown below:
Or how about a seventh chord? This time, remove your little finger from any of the E-shaped chords. For example, play an E-shaped chord on the 7th fret and you have a B chord, now remove your little finger and you have a B7 chord.
This takes the E-shaped, Em-shaped, and E7-shaped chord and makes it any other version of that chord across the entire fretboard. That's 36 new chords from only 3 chord shapes - exciting!
And… it will also work for other E-shaped variations, such as Em7, etc., etc. but you can work those out by yourself, it will help you fully understand the power of the CAGED system.
But what about on the A string?
Well, guess what, it’s exactly the same as the E-shaped chords. The root of an A chord is the open 5th (A) string, and you use this string and chord shape in the same way. For example, as you probably know, an A-shaped chord on the second fret is a B chord. Now move it up one and you’ll get a C chord, up two more frets and it becomes a D.
Here are a few more examples to familiarise yourself with the concept:
On the 3rd fret - C major chord
On the 5th fret - D major chord
On the 7th fret - E major chord
On the 10th fret - G major chord
On the 12th fret - A major chord (an octave higher than the root A chord)
On the 14th fret - B major chord
As with the E-shaped chord, it works in exactly the same way for an Am or A7-shaped chord. For example, an Am-shaped chord on the 5th fret is a Dm, and an A7-shaped chord on the 8th fret is an F7, as shown below:
Wrapping it Up
That’s it for Part 1 of my in-depth look at the CAGED system. In Part 2, we’ll be expanding the horizons and introducing the barre versions of the C, D, and G chords to complete the CaGeD.
From there, we’ll be looking at how the system works with scales and, finally and most exciting, how to join everything together to create a visual roadmap of your fretboard that will make it look and feel like a much less daunting place than it does at the moment.
Catch you then…
