Guitar All-in-One For Dummies, 2nd Edition

Chapter 2

Getting to Know the CAGED System

IN THIS CHAPTER

Forming and fingering major and minor chord shapes

Playing chord inversions and voicings

Visualizing how chord shapes connect to cover the whole fretboard

Access the audio track and video clips at www.dummies.com/go/guitaraio/

The guitar uses five basic major chord shapes. In the open position, they are C, A, G, E, and D. What does that spell? CAGED. The cool thing is that you can play each one as a barre chord and move it around the neck, and you can break these barre chords into smaller chord shapes. Also, each chord is taken from a larger arpeggio pattern that you can use to form additional voicings.

In the guitar world, you can apply the CAGED system in a few different ways. This chapter deals with using it to form and finger chords. You literally play every possible major and minor chord. More than that, you get to know the simple concept used to form these chords so you don’t have to memorize a bunch of chord diagrams. You change the ordering and spacing of the pitches by using inversions and voicings. You get away ...