The Concept of CAGED System of Guitar – Part 1

If you have ever delved into Music Theory at any depth, you must have come across the term, CAGED System. Many novice guitarists find it tough to grasp the concept of CAGED System.

This concept is purely theoretical but has huge practical implications, if implemented correctly. A lot of your questions and doubts will get cleared once you understand the CAGED System.

This is a series of posts which will take up all the shapes in the CAGED System.

The Concept of CAGED System

The CAGED System is derived from the combination of notes on the guitar neck with the notes of the chords. Once again, let’s take an example to understand this better.

Let’s first find the notes

Let’s take the example of F major chord. In the key of F major, the triad notes will be F, A and C. (See below)

As you can see in the image on the left, all the notes of F major scale have been indicated. The triad notes are highlighted so focus on them. Notice that every note can be found on every string.

It would be a good exercise to find out each note yourself and mark the triad notes. Do it for G major scale as a home-work!

What we are going to do next is try to identify various shapes among the notations. The triad notations will help us in identifying the shapes.

These shapes constitute the CAGED System.

Now that you have understood the concept of the CAGED System, it is time to move on to the first shape, the E Shape (Part 2).

If you enjoyed the post, you can check out the complete song-chord list. Having difficulty understanding guitar notations above? Check out this Quick Guide to clear all your doubts. If you are a professional musician or a good guitarist and want to share your skills with everybody else, you can join the blog as a Regular Contributor.