Learn about the repeating pattern of shapes on the fretboard, named after the five open chord shapes (C-A-G-E-D). Each shape can be used to play a chord, arpeggio, pentatonic or diatonic scale in every key... which makes them worth knowing!
Chords, Arpeggios, and Scales in Each CAGED Shape – my most recent CAGED lesson shows how each shape contains not only a chord, but also an arpeggio, pentatonic scale, and diatonic scale. Realizing that the whole thing is more than just chord shapes is incredibly valuable, in my experience. It allows you to practice all these things together, which helps them all gel and sink in much more quickly.
Major Scale Positions and CAGED - back in 2021 I made a lesson showing each of the five major scale “boxes”, and how each maps to one of the CAGED shapes. This includes a 7-page PDF, with one page dedicated to each shape… fretboard finger positions included!
My First Steps with CAGED – here’s another lesson from 2021, where I share my initial breakthrough with CAGED. This includes a handy PDF cheat sheet visualizing the C-A-G-E-D patterns on the fretboard, and how they interconnect.
Major Arpeggios and CAGED – an example of putting CAGED to use in practice, specifically with major arpeggios in a single key. I demonstrate how to practice major arpeggios in each of the CAGED shapes, with a handy PDF guide included.
Moving Melodies Between CAGED Shapes – a look at how we can take any melody and move it between CAGED shapes! I use a handle of very common songs (e.g. Twinkle Twinkle Little Star) to demonstrate this, showing each of them as played in multiple areas of the fretboard.
Does CAGED Help When Learning Songs? – if you’re unsure whether or not learning CAGED shapes helps with songs or not, check out this lesson. In short, it depends! You may be totally happy & satisfied learning songs as they’re taught, without any CAGED awareness. And that’s fine! But if your goal is to improvise, use altenrative chord voicings, or move riffs up/down the neck — knowing your CAGED shapes helps immensely.
Need Help Reading Fretboard Diagrams? – check out my Reading Music for Guitarists course, where I teach how to make sense out of fretboard diagrams with letters or numbers within each note. This may seem confusing at first, but it’s so incredibly helpful to understand when learning guitar.
In addition to the video lessons I’ve made, there’s many of instructional PDF guides and cheat sheets I’ve made to accompany these lessons. These are all hand-made by me, giving you the helpful info in a print-friendly format you can download or print to reference at your convenience.
Each PDF can be downloaded from it’s corresponding lesson page.
These, along with all the other instructional PDFs I’ve made, are included with Premium membership here on my Song Notes website. Thanks all of you who support me with membership — your support makes these lessons possible!
At the moment, I don’t yet have a true step-by-step course on CAGED. But — this is very much something I plan on adding in the future! Feel free to email me if you have any specific questions on this topic, or if you’d like to vote to have these lessons done sooner than later.
In the meantime, here’s some CAGED 101 videos from other teachers I recommend:
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