Pickup Music’s lesson on the CAGED system will have you flying around the fretboard in no time at all!
It’s no secret that a lot of guitarists shy away from music theory. Let’s face it, most of us want to have fun when we grab our guitars, not make our brains hurt. Luckily, you don’t need to bury your head in wordy books to decipher the secrets of the fretboard.
The CAGED system is a foolproof way to understand the musical relationships between notes, chord shapes and scale patterns, and Pickup Music has sent over a free lesson to make learning the basics a piece of cake. There’s a companion video lesson, too, so if you want some musical backing for the exercises, load it up and jam along.
We’ll start with a quick overview of the CAGED system for those who don’t know it. ou take the ve basic open chord shapes (C, A, G, E and D) and connect them together along the fretboard. Just like our well-known barre chords, these shapes can be moved around the neck and all ve shapes neatly t together.
Get access to the world’s best online guitar courses and reach your guitar goals with structured lessons and personalised feedback from pro instructors. Pickup Music even offera 14-day free trial so you can take alook before you buy.
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1 How many ways can you play a C chord?
Guess what? Every shape on this diagram is aCchord! It can be tough to spot the patterns at first, so read on and we’ll break them down for you. Note that ‘R’ denotesa root note, ‘3’ is a 3rd interval and ‘5’ is a 5th. We’ll let you work out which fingers to use!
2 Shapes you know
You probably already know the ope
