![\"CAGED](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/all-caged.png\")
<\/p>\nThe CAGED system in a nutshell: Take one of the common open chords and move it along the neck so that it becomes a different chord. That’s pretty much it!<\/p>\n
That’s the short version but it still pretty much sums it up. This doesn’t mean it isn’t useful, just don’t forget its simplicity otherwise you, like many others, will forever be searching for a system that doesn’t exist. If you want to make use of the CAGED system then the best thing you can do is forget all about the word “system” and just swap it for the word “chords”. I’m not going to spend a lot of time telling you all about the marvels of the so-called system. I’m going to give a quick explanation of what it is and then jump straight into showing you some things you can do with it. Let’s get to it.<\/p>\n
CAGED refers to the open chords C, A, G, E and D. These are the common chord shapes you learn as a beginner.<\/p>\n
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Each one of these chords can be referred to by their chord form. C form, D form etc. You should already know that each fret on the fretboard is a semitone (half step) apart. You should also already know what the chromatic scale is. If you don’t know this stuff already then go learn them first. If we move any chord up the fretboard by one fret then the whole chord will move up by a semitone. In other words if we move the D major chord up by one fret then it will become D# major. Move it up another and it becomes E major, etc.<\/p>\n
![\"D](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/d-moved.png\")
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When we move a chord that ordinarily uses open strings, we need to move those along too. Easy to understand, not necessarily easy to do. For the D chord this requires some difficult finger stretching. For the rest of the chords we use the first finger to bar the fret to act as a capo. Not too hard for the E and A form with a bit of practice. Still quite difficult for C and G. Here are the barred versions of these chords all moved up one fret and using the first finger to bar the first fret.<\/p>\n
![\"CAGED](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cage-moved.png\")
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Most of the time we’ll probably bar across all six strings with the finger, but we don’t have to, it could be just a partial bar or a full bar, something like this for the chord C#.<\/p>\n
![\"C#](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/partial-bar-csharp.png\")
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For the C form chord when barring all six strings, it’s OK to play the sixth string but will change the sound as it will put the 3rd in the bass instead of starting on the root. Any variation of the barred C from chord is quite difficult to perfect, it’s a difficult stretch, but to be honest, most of the time we don’t worry too much about it because often we will just use partial chords. More on this in a moment.<\/p>\n
This is pretty much the entire concept of the CAGED system. Now to be honest, there’s not a great deal of things we can do with all of this, so far, other than play chords in a different position, but it’s also very useful for visualising chords in various places along the neck. From here on out, we’ll use the chord forms as our underlying knowledge of moving around and visualising the fretboard. We’ve only looked at common major chords. It can, however, be any chord we want. Any chord that does not use open strings can be moved anywhere along the neck in this way. Even more important than this is to realise that many chords can be broken up into smaller parts. Here are some examples of how we could play the A, D and E forms on just the first three strings, i.e., just play the black notes only.<\/p>\n
![\"A,](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/ade-3-strings.png\")
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In the diagrams above I have included the intervals so you can see that even when using just the first three string, we still get to use all of the chord tones; root, 3rd and 5th, so nothing is missing other than the notes that would normally be repeated in the lower octave.<\/p>\n
These three chord forms are probably the ones you will use the most. We can still make use of the C and G forms but not on the first three strings. If you look closer at the C form you’ll see that if we play it only on the first three strings then essentially it just becomes the D form. For example, if we move the C chord up two frets to make it D, then the first three strings just overlap our normal D chord.<\/p>\n
![\"Caged](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-d-overlap.png\")
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For the G form, if we want to use all three notes, i.e., root, 3rd and 5th, then we would need to use either the first four strings, or just strings 2, 3 and 4, in which case it will essentially become the A form of the same strings. A picture is worth a thousand words so just look at the diagrams below to make sense of this.<\/p>\n
![\"Caged](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/a-g-overlap.png\")
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Although the C and G forms don’t have quite as much usefulness on the thinner guitar strings, there’s nothing stopping us playing the chords on the thicker strings. Chords played only on the thicker strings sometimes create a sound that is thicker than we might want, they can sound great though when played one note at a time for riffs or arpeggios. Just this simple three note shape can be very handy.<\/p>\n
![\"Triads](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/c-g-form-thick-strings.png\")
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To make any of this useful to our guitar playing, we need to be able to find the chord positions quickly. This is where most people get stuck. You’ve got to know where the root notes are in each chord shape and you need to be able to find those notes on the fretboard. There’s only two ways this can be done. You start at a note you know and count frets, or you just learn where the notes are. Counting frets is slow and not of much use in the real world. Learning the notes on the fretboard takes time. There’s no tricks, no magic, no secrets. You need to learn them if you want any of this to be useful to you. How do you learn them? You just get on with it. You play, you practice, you think, you learn one thing at a time and just improve as you go. The more you do it, the quicker you’ll get there.<\/p>\n
Let’s get practical with some very basic examples.<\/p>\n
Imagine we’re one of two guitarists in a band playing a simple three chord progression. The other guitarist is playing open chords, we want to do the same thing but stay out of the way (harmonically) of the other guitarist. The easiest way to achieve this is to play the chords higher up in a different octave and maybe use a slightly different rhythm while we’re at it. For this we are going to use an E form chord for C and A form chord for F and G, all on the first four strings.<\/p>\n
Example 1<\/strong><\/p>\n![\"1](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/cfg-4-strings.png\")
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![\"Chord](\"https:\/\/www.guitar-chords.org.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/simple-pop-chords-1.png\")
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