If you’ve ever perused the web seeking guitar material, chances are you’ve run across a mysterious fretboard mapping theory called the CAGED System. Maybe you thought, What is this, a wire box that holds a bounty of chord voicings, or maybe a way of playing in solitary confinement? Well, it’s no big mystery once you unlock the first key of the cage. Once understood, the CAGED System can be used to connect the fretboard in a network of interlocking and overlapping chord voicings, arpeggios and scales. In this lesson, we’ll examine the fundamentals of the CAGED System, how it applies to chords and lining them up along the fretboard, as well as systems for combining shapes for common chord progressions.
BASIC CAGED-SYSTEM CHORD VOICINGS
The CAGED System is founded upon five basic open-position chords: C (C, E, G), A (A, C#, E), G (G, B, D), E (E, G#’ B) and D (D, F#’ A). (See Ex. 1) Well, would you look at that — the names of the chords spell C-A-G-E-D, providing us with an easy-to-remember acronym. But wait — there’s much more!
THE HUMAN CAPO
It’s possible to move these five open-position chords up the neck to any key. All you need to do is use your fret-hand index finger as a human capo, as you do when forming barre chords. Look at the C chord shape in . Notice the unorthodox fret-hand fingering suggestions. (C E G see Ex. 3). Once you understand this process, it’s possible to slide this voicing to any key along the fretboard by simply shifting the entire shape up one or more frets.
