The CAGED system
Five open-chord shapes that, moved up the neck, cover the whole fretboard and link chords, arpeggios and scales.
Applied
Content under musical review. It may contain inaccuracies.
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Five open-chord shapes that, moved up the neck, cover the whole fretboard and link chords, arpeggios and scales.
Applied
CAGED is named after five open chords: C, A, G, E and D. Turn each shape into a barre chord and move it, and you can play the same chord in five areas of the neck. The five fit together like puzzle pieces. The system only works in standard tuning.
The same C chord in three areas of the neck. The register and colour change, but the notes are the same:
The five source shapes in open position:
String 5, Fret 3: C3 · C · Root
Every C chord tone on the neck, by degree. Notice how the roots repeat:
String 6, Open: E2 · 3 · Third
Turn on the CAGED system in the fretboard and step through the five positions one at a time:
The five chord shapes The major scale split into CAGED positionsFor C, the shapes appear in this order as you move up the neck: the C shape in open position, the A shape barred at fret 3, the G shape around frets 5 to 8, the E shape at fret 8 and the D shape at fret 10. At the 12th fret the C shape returns. The C-A-G-E-D order is the same in every key; only the starting point moves.
In practice it helps you:
Each major shape becomes minor by lowering the third one fret, and dominant by lowering one of the roots to the minor seventh (two frets down). That gives you five shapes of Am or G7 on the same map. Practise just the roots of each shape first; then add thirds and fifths.
Scales, arpeggios & fretboardPentatonic positionsTravel the five pentatonic positions and connect them.The shapes interlock because the strings are tuned in fourths, with a major third between the 3rd and 2nd strings. That gap is what bends every shape by one fret as it crosses those strings. In any other tuning the relationships change and the five shapes no longer connect. CAGED organises the neck around chords; if you want uniform scale patterns for picking, compare it with the three-notes-per-string system, which spreads the scale over seven positions.