Major Scales & CAGED Positions

Instructional PDF 7 pages

About This Lesson

Hey friends! Lesson today where I tackle the common positions of the major scale – and explain how each of these positions maps to one of the “CAGED” chord shapes (which I covered in a previous lesson). To me, this was an immensely helpful realization, especially given the numbered scale positions can seem unhelpfully arbitrary and academic, especially when starting out. In this video, I’ll show how you can take any of the CAGED chord shapes (that you’re likely familiar with, even if you don’t know it yet) – and show how to play the major scale based around that shape. This opens the door to improvisation, soloing, adding flourish notes, and all kinds of other good things. So let’s get into it!

0:00 Overview & Lesson Summary
6:44 Major Scale Crash Course
8:12 Major Scale Positions
11:15 Each CAGED Chord Shape’s Major Scale
12:58 How Scale Positions are Numbered
19:01 Which Position(s) to Learn First?
20:59 Which Fingers To Use In Each Shape
24:19 Intervals and 7th Chords
27:19 A Final Analogy to Explain All This

Need help with CAGED or the 12 Notes?

I made two earlier videos, each of which has a PDF you can download, if you need to get re-familiarized with these concepts.

Learning the 12 notes

Lesson #356 - view lesson notes & get the PDF.

Learning the CAGED Chord Shapes

Lesson #385 - view lesson notes & get the PDF.

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