The C-A-G-E-D System

This system was first codified by Bill Edwards in the series of books entitled Fretboard Logic. The series goes into incredible detail, but the concept behind it is actually quite simple. Essentially, it breaks the guitar's fretboard down into five fingerings that are very easy and most likely very familiar to you already. These are the standard, open-position major chords that every guitar player knows, C A G E and D, shown in the picture below.

Basic CAGED forms

*Note that in this diagram (and all diagrams on this page), the root notes are circled. In other words, in the C chord shown above, the circled notes are C notes. In the G chord, the circled notes are G notes.

What's cool about this system is that it provides a basic 'road map' of the fretboard for you--even when you get into the most complex musical concepts, you can still use these shapes as your 'guideposts' on the neck of the guitar.

Now we have to translate each of these basic shapes into a "moveable" form, one that can be placed anywhere on the neck (usually a form of bar chord):

Moveable CAGED forms

(Again, the root notes are circled. Now, as you move these forms up the neck of the guitar, the root note of the chord is determined by where the circled notes fall. Example: if you place the "E" shape on the 5th fret, the circled notes all fall on "A" notes; therefore, it is an A chord).

IMPORTANT POINT: You might notice that a couple of these moveable forms are not particularly convenient for practical use. The idea is not that you use these shapes as regular chord voicings; rather, you should simply know where that shape lies on the neck for whatever key you are playing in. Your scales for improvising and your chord voicings can then be based around that shape (more on that later). You can also take portions of these forms and create chord voicings that are cool and practical for everyday use (more on that later too).

You're probably already familiar with the "A" and "E" shapes--these are standard bar chord forms. The C shape is quite useful as well. I personally don't find the moveable "G" and "D" shapes to be useful as chord voicings (unless I just use parts of them), but I do use them all the time as forms to improvise around. What could be more familiar to our fingers than a G chord or a D chord?

The next step is to get familiar with how these shapes apply to the different keys. Based on these shapes, you should be able to find five different fingerings for each of the 12 different major chords. You'll learn this best if you try to figure it all out for yourself, but I'll give you this chart to make it a little easier for you:

Key	fret where "C" shape falls	fret where "A" shape falls	fret where "G" shape falls	fret where "E" shape falls	fret where "D" shape falls
A	9	0, 12	2	5	7
Bb	10	1, 13	3	6	8
B	11	2	4	7	9
C	0, 12	3	5	8	10
C# / Db	1	4	6	9	11
D	2	5	7	10	0, 12
Eb	3	6	8	11	1
E	4	7	9	0, 12	2
F	5	8	10	1	3
F# / Gb	6	9	11	2	4
G	7	10	0, 12	3	5
Ab	8	11	1	4	6

It's worth noting at this point that the shapes ALWAYS occur in the same order on the neck of the guitar. For example, if you are playing an Bb chord, the "A" form occurs first (lowest) on the neck, on the 1st fret, followed by the "G" form on the 3rd fret, the "E" form on the 6th, the "D" form on the 8th, and the "C" form on the 10th.

Practice suggestion: Pick out major chords at random, and find all 5 ways to play each one based on the CAGED system. It can be particularly helpful to pick out chords that we DON'T play that often...try Db, Ab, F#, etc.

Applying CAGED to Pentatonic Scales

Pentatonic scales are easy to improvise with, and very familiar to many guitarists, so let's take a look at how these fit in with the CAGED system. There are basically 5 fingerings for the pentatonic scale (the major pentatonic scale, to be specific), and they correspond to our CAGED chord forms as follows:

Pentatonics and CAGED

Compare these to the moveable forms shown earlier, and you will see that each note of each moveable form is present and accounted for in each of the pentatonic fingerings. The root notes are circled again for reference.

It's worth noting that I was the one named these pentatonic scales "C-shape", "A-shape", etc., for the purposes of this page. These are NOT standard names for the pentatonic scales. As far as I know, there aren't really any standardized names for the pentatonic scale fingerings, so these names are as good as any.

Minor Pentatonic: Many people are familiar with what is sometimes called the "minor pentatonic" scale (the "G" form shown above, but played over a minor key or in a blues song). The easiest way to translate what we have learned so far to the minor pentatonic is to think in terms of relative major & minor. If you don't know what this means, each major key has a "relative minor" key that is essentially its equivalent (and, conversely, each minor key has a "relative major."). Look at this chart for reference:

For example, if we are playing in the key of Am (or playing a blues song in A), we can look at the chart and see what major key is the relative major of Am...C major. Since C and Am are basically equivalent, we can apply the CAGED system as shown above for the key of C major, essentially treating the Am as though it is C major (because they're the same). To make a C chord, the C shape falls in open or 12th position, the A shape falls in 2nd position, the G shape (the familiar one) in 5th position, the E shape in 8th position, and the D shape in 10th position.

Applying CAGED to major scales and the major modes

We can now take this a step further and apply these fingerings to the major scales and their modes (the modes are discussed in depth in the Mode Workshop). Look how they correspond:

It's also worth noting, by the way, how closely these mode fingerings relate to the 5 pentatonic fingerings.

Thought process for applying this to different keys and modes:

EXAMPLE: We are playing "Dark Star," an improvisational song by the Grateful Dead that is largely played in the mode of A mixolydian (until it gets weird, anyway). Hear an audio sample.