The CAGED System

There are 5 main areas of the fretboard. By 5 areas, I mean we can divide the neck into 5 portions. Each of these portions or areas are designed to optimize the guitar neck for chords, scales, arpeggios and everyday playing.

These 5 main areas are also known as the CAGED system. The 'CAGED' is actually referring to open position major chord shapes (C Major, A Major, G Major, E Major and D Major... C, A, G, E, D... CAGED). Each of these open position major chord shapes are found in one of the 5 main areas of the guitar neck. The first thing beginner guitarists learn is how to play these chords in open position, and now you can use them to assist you in learning the rest of the guitar neck in an organized way.

The following are the 5 main areas of the guitar in the key of D. Each area of the guitar can be remembered or classified by moveable major chord shapes (which as you will find out, are derivations of open chord shapes).

Let’s start with the first area above. Does that chord shape look familiar? It should, it is the same shape used in a regular C Major chord. Remember that even though we are using the same C Major chord shape we are not playing C Major because we have moved that shape up the neck (Just like what’s done when playing barre chords). The above example would be a D Major chord as we have moved the C Major shape up 2 frets to the note of D.

Each of these 5 areas includes much more information then just a chord shape. They also include the arpeggio and scale for that chord as well. The following are three diagrams, a chord diagram, an arpeggio diagram and a scale diagram for this area of the neck.

I hope your starting to realize how useful these areas can be. Not only do you have the chord shapes inside these areas, but also their related arpeggio and scale shapes. A good exercise to memorize these shapes would be to play the scale, then the arpeggio and finally the chord. For scales and arpeggios, its good practice to start on the lowest root note, play to the highest note in that position, descend back down to the lowest note in that position, and then back up to the root. The exercise would go as follows in the Key of D.

Part II - Chords, Arpeggios and Scales found in the CAGED system