I don't know a single guitarist who likes the CAGED system. It feels like a completely disconnected framework from everything else you learn, and by the time it becomes useful, in my opinion, you know enough other stuff that you don't need it.
So here's a framework that's much more practically and immediately useful. It's basically what CAGED teaches, but demystified. Instead of memorising five C shapes and then wondering what to do with them, you'll be able to find chords by yourself, wherever you are on the neck, and weave them in and out of your lead playing.
What this works for ▶ 1:18
This works for diatonic chord progressions. In other words, progressions that use notes within the key and don't do anything too wacky. That covers a lot of songs. I'll show you how to adapt it for chords that go outside the key at the end, which is quite common in things like blues.
Some music theory helps here, but it isn't essential. I'll explain it in a way that doesn't need it.
Start with the key and its notes ▶ 1:49
First off, pick a key, or find out what key the song you're playing along to is in. I'm using A minor. Make sure you're looking at the natural minor scale, which is just the minor scale.
The notes in A minor are A, B, C, D, E, F and G. And we can make a chord out of every single one of those notes. We don't even need to know which chords are in the key for this to work, though the process will tell us anyway.
Build any chord: take one, skip one ▶ 2:38
Here's the simple trick for building the chord. Take whichever note you want to make a chord from. Skip the next note in the scale and take the one after. Then skip again and take the one after that.
So for A: take A, skip B, take C, skip D, take E. A, C and E. That gives you an A minor chord.
What that means is that anywhere on the fretboard you play A, C and E, in any combination and in any order, you get an A minor chord.
Find those notes in one area of the neck ▶ 3:13
Now pick an area of the neck. Say frets 5 to 8. Where can you find A, C and E around there?
Any combination of those notes gives you an A minor chord. A couple of examples:
You can barre across the 5th fret on the G, B and high e strings (C, E and A). Or play the 7th fret on the D string with the 5th fret on the G and B. You can keep going up the neck too: around the 12th fret there's another E, C and A, and you can add extra Es and Cs on top. The whole combination still gives you A minor.
If you already know the chord is A minor, an arpeggio chart for A minor is a quick way to see every A, C and E on the neck. The Fretboard Navigator is handy for this too.
Learn your scale positions so it isn't overwhelming ▶ 5:15
Looking at the whole fretboard at once is a lot. So learn the five scale positions for the key, one at a time. Position one of A minor sits between frets 5 and 8, which is why I picked that range.
If you know that position, you can improvise all around it. Then, whenever you want to, depending on what you're playing along to, you land on an A minor chord by hitting any combination of those A, C and E notes. Or you can arpeggiate them, playing them one note at a time. That's also how you hit chord tones when you're soloing over a progression.
The chords in A minor, and the C and D examples ▶ 6:24
If you want to know which chords to look up ahead of time, you can just search for them. The chords in A minor are A minor, B diminished, C major, D minor, E minor, F major and G major. In a minor key they always appear in this order: minor, diminished, major, minor, minor, major, major. That's true in C minor or any other minor key.
Let's do the same process for C. Take C, skip D, take E, skip F, take G. So C, E and G. In the frets 5 to 8 area, you could play the 8th fret on the low E string, 7th fret on the A string and 5th fret on the D string, and add the 5th fret on the G and B strings.
And for D: take D, skip E, take F, skip G, take A. D, F and A. Any combination of those gives you D minor.
Weave chords into your lead playing ▶ 8:03
Once you know your A minor scale position and where each chord's notes sit inside it, you can start combining them. I can be playing a lead line and land on that A minor chord on the three highest strings at the 5th fret. Then a bit more lead, and land on an E chord, a C chord, a D minor, a G major, going in and out of chords with lead lines in between.
All I'm doing is that same process. The chords stop being isolated shapes and become part of the scale position you're already in, with all the other notes around them in context.
When a chord goes outside the key ▶ 9:04
If a chord goes outside the key, which is quite common, look up what the notes are in that chord and target those notes in the same part of the fretboard you're playing in. To be honest, this is where you really want to know a bit more theory. You can try to shortcut it, but once keys or chords start changing, things get a bit trickier.
What to practise ▶ 9:26
Take the first position of the A minor scale and learn it if you don't already know it. Then build a chord from every note in it, A, B, C, D, E, F and G, using take one, skip the next. Tab out or make a note of where those chord notes sit within that position, and try to memorise them.
Then whenever one of those chords comes up, you know which notes you can play. Hit them together as a chord, or one at a time as an arpeggio to bring out the chord tones. You'll still have to do a bit of learning and practice, but hopefully you won't have to worry about the CAGED system any more.
