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Hey @Powelly ;
I just found another way to help you understand the CAGED system.
I’m assuming you took the 30 days to play course? Look at 30 Days To Play Guitar Challenge, Week 1 – Learn The Basics Of Guitar With The Blues. In the introduction, Tony says you will learn 3 variations of a song, and you can play them all over the neck.
Notice that all 3, The Blues Shuffle, The Blues Baseline, and The Blues Boogie. use A, D and E “shapes”, or chords. At this point, he doesn’t want to cause confusion and he just calls them the A, D, and E “positions”. Notice that the Shuffle and the Boogie use the open A string, the open D string and the open E string as your bass note, and you can call that a root note even though you are playing notes and not a chord.
Notice that one of the notes you are playing in the Blues Shuffle is on the 2nd fret. Now, look at the open E chord, the open A chord, and the open D chord. The next string after the “root” string, is on the 2nd fret. Try it. Play an E chord, the 5th string is fretted on the 2nd fret. The A chord is rooted on the 5th, and the 4th string is fretted on the 2nd. Same for the D chord, the 4th string is your root note, and the 3rd string is fretted on the second.
The Blues Boogie throws in more notes, but you still play the open 5th string and the 2nd fret of the 4th string for the “A position”. The open 4th string and the 2nd fret of the 3rd string for the “D position”. And yep, the open 6th string and the 2nd fret of the 5th string for the “E position”.
Now, let’s look closer at the Blues Bassline, the second lesson in Week 1. Open the tab and look at it. You will see that the root note for the A position is the 5th fret of the 6th string. Now, look at an open E chord. Notice that the root is the open 6th string, and the 5th and 4th string are fretted at the 2nd fret. Now, look back at the tab for the Blues Bassline and see that it plays the 5th fret on the 6th string and the 7th fret on the 5th and 4th strings. You are picking out some of the notes of the “E shaped” A major chord, even though you aren’t playing or fretting the chord. You have simply slide the E shape up 5 frets.
Now, notice the root of the D position is the same 5th fret, on the 5th string, and it uses notes that are 2 frets higher on the 4th and 3rd strings just like the open A chord. And then the E position still uses the 5th string, just slide up 2 more frets.
So the Blues Bassline is picking out some of the notes of the E shaped A major chord, the A shaped D major chord and the A shaped E major chord.
That’s what CAGED means. You can use those 5 open chords to figure out how to play all over the fretboard. You won’t see the whole, big picture for a while. Don’t worry about it. Just learn what you can and have fun with what you can.
Remember, you can play cool sounding stuff without understanding what you’re playing or why it’s cool sounding. The notes and the music don’t care if you understand. Your audience doesn’t care if you understand if you are playing something they like.
MG 😀