Unlock Your Guitar: CAGED System For Bluegrass!

Hey there, it's Aaron Jaxon coming to you today, and I want to welcome you to a little masterclass around the CAGE system. This video is going to be a compilation of a 2-part series that I did on the CAGE system that's kind of designed for bluegrass pickers, although this lesson is completely applicable for players in any style. So the first half of this lesson is going to deal with the C and the A shapes of the CAGE system, and the second half of this lesson is going to deal with the G, the E, and the D shapes of the CAGE system. And what you're going to learn is the arpeggio for each of those shapes, and then you're going to learn the associated scale patterns that you need to know for each shape as well. This helps you see the relationship between chords and scales and also maps out all of the territory that you're going to need on the guitar neck. In addition to that, I'll show you how to practice your technique and timing for all of these arpeggios and associated scale shapes. And yes, for this lesson, we're just going to be dealing with our C major chord. We're not going to be doing any minor 7 chords or dominant 7th chords for this lesson. And I do that because a lot of times when people start thinking about the CAGED system, they think about too much at one time. They start thinking about the minor chords and the dominant 7th chords and the 9th chords. But if you'll really start and get a good grip with just the major chords there, it'll make learning the other chords and scale patterns a lot easier. Also, where this lesson is geared more toward bluegrass pickers, most bluegrass music is just played with major chords. Not all, but most of it is played just using major chords. So if you can get these patterns down, you can move them around to different keys and really have a great mastery of the fretboard. So I really do think that this lesson is going to unlock the guitar neck for you in a really profound way. And remember, this is the fretboard mastery style of what I teach here on this channel. You want to learn this stuff in combination with the vocabulary and the repertoire-based stuff that I teach on this channel. And by that I mean licks, tunes, note-for-note solos, all of that good stuff. Because when you learn both, you can see what your favorite players are pulling from when they come up with their great licks, phrases, and solos. This will also give you a lot more ammunition and leverage when coming up with your own lead breaks. So you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I do have this whole lesson broken down into chapters below, so if you want to skip ahead to a certain section, you can absolutely do that. All right, let's jump into the lesson. Okay, so let's jump in and let's learn our arpeggio and our 3 associated scale patterns in the C position here. So let's start with our little C shape down here. And so let's start with our arpeggio. So we're just going to do—

okay, okay.

So we're just mapping out the chord tones in our C major chord here. Okay, so there's that. Okay, and I'd say most of y'all are, you know, obviously very familiar with that, but We want to take those chord tones and turn them into melodic ideas there. Okay, now let's go ahead and let's, let's do our associated scale patterns here. So, so again, if you're not already familiar with your scale patterns, again, go check out my Blues Scales for Bluegrass Guitar Masterclass, get my Guitar Scales Fundamentals course. You really want to have a good grip on these before jumping into this lesson. But anyway, associated scale patterns again with this position right here. So pentatonic scale will do. Okay, now where we are using open strings right here, that may, um, feel a little unfamiliar, but basically that's— I, in my mind, I think of that as pentatonic pattern 4. Like, if you've learned your minor pentatonic patterns, like A minor, starting with A minor, which These will work in C major too. That's like pattern 1. Up here, pattern 2, pattern 3, and then pattern 4, you know, but we're playing pattern 4 down here with open strings.

Okay, so that's our associated pentatonic scale.

Let's do our associated associated diatonic scale, and that's going to be this. Okay, and again, I consider that— it's like diatonic scale pattern 3. Okay, and then let's do our associated blues scale, and it's gonna be the same— it's gonna be very similar to the pentatonic scale that we played, but we got an extra note that we're gonna throw in. So that's gonna go like this. Okay, so almost the same thing, but okay. So one more time, arpeggio. Pentatonic scale.

Diatonic scale.

And blues scale. Okay, so like, how cool is that? Like, look, look at how much juice that we can squeeze out of 3 frets out of a, out of a freaking C major chord shape. Okay, I know a lot of people have been playing the guitar for decades and they get— they, you know, they, they just get stuck. I mean, I hear about it as a teacher all the time, but this is a great way to really get unstuck because look at again how much juice you can squeeze out of a C major shape out of 3 frets. It's insane. It's such a cool thing, and that's why learning this is such a great thing to do as a guitar player. One of the other things that we want to do when we're learning this stuff is not just learn these patterns, not just learn these notes, but where— again, I'm mostly teaching bluegrass guitar on this channel. That may very well change in the future. I might start expanding into other styles, but as of now, we're mostly doing bluegrass here. What we want to do is you want to practice your technique, you want to practice your alternate picking, and you also want to practice your timing. So here's what I'm going to do here real quick. I'm going to play that arpeggio, and I'm gonna play the 3 associated scale patterns along with a Strum Machine backing track. Okay, I'm not gonna play this fast. This does not need to be a chop builder or a shred fest here. But what we do want to do, we want to practice technique and timing, but we also want to make this sound like music. Okay, so I'm gonna do that here. This is a Strum Machine backing track, and I'm— again, I'm gonna play the arpeggio and the 3 associated scale patterns, and that'll sound like this. Okay, so now let's jump up and let's do the A shape out of our CAGED system here. So this is our kind of A shape bar chord for C major here, okay? And so let's go ahead and, uh, we're gonna start with the, um, let's, let's start with the arpeggio here. So we're gonna do Okay, I'll play that again. Okay, and we want to do 3 associated scale patterns again out of this kind of— out of this area of the fretboard here. Okay, so we'll start off with the pentatonic scale. Let's do our diatonic scale and our blues scale. Okay, so again, look at how much juice that we can squeeze out of, you know, just a couple of frets here out of a C major chord shape. Arpeggio, pentatonic scale, diatonic scale, and blues scale.

Okay.

So I want to do the same thing with the A shape that I did with the C shape. I'm going to play this along with the Strum Machine backing track again because we want to practice technique, we want to practice timing, and we also want to make this stuff sound as musical as possible. So that'll sound like this. So in just what we've covered today, in our C and our A shapes, I want you to see— again, I use this phrase a lot here, but how much juice that we can squeeze out of that. And again, what we're doing here— and again, whether we're learning our CAGED system, whether we're learning our scale patterns— we're mapping out the territory on our guitar. We're navigating the fretboard. And this is a great thing to learn in addition to the vocabulary-based stuff that I teach on there. And that's licks, phrases, tunes, note-for-note solos, all of that kind of good stuff. Because when you have a good grip of, you know, the way your fretboard is laid out and you've built your vocabulary, you can see where your favorite players are pulling from, and it just gives you a much greater context and enables you to come up with your own ideas. Again, I will be doing a part 2 to this lesson where we cover the G, E, and D shapes here, but for right now, just get started with the C shape. Get started with the A shape and just get started with C major. Don't worry about the other types of chords, just get these couple of major arpeggios and associated scale patterns down, and it'll be a great foundation for really mastering the fretboard. Remember that you can get the tabs for this lesson and the backing tracks that I was playing along with down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I really hope this starts to unlock the fretboard for you and shows you just how much juice that you can squeeze out of these basic major bar chord positions. Always thanks for hanging out, and I will see you next time. Okay, so like I said, today we're going to cover the G, E, and D shapes of the CAGED system. So let's start off here with our G shape, C major, and it's this god-awful, horrible, painful, and not particularly good sounding bar chord that I never use, and I hope you never do either. However, this position contains a lot of fretboard roadmap knowledge, if you will, that we need to know. So let's start with the arpeggio right here. That's going to go like this. We're going to do Okay, let's do that one more time, just the arpeggio here.

We'll do—

that one's kind of tricky to get your hands around, but again, you want to know those chord tones in that position. So what we're kind of doing, it's, it's almost like 3 different arpeggios all strung together, like this one Okay, this one, just that, and then this one, and they're all kind of strung together. Um, okay, so there's just some great— you want to, you want to be aware of the chord tones contained in that position right there. Obviously I mostly teach bluegrass flatpicking on this channel, but I'm a huge Mark Knopfler fan, as I'm sure you are too. But if you've ever listened to the Sultans of Swing solo, there's a part in there where he kind of, you know, um, so that's just some really famous ideas out of that shape right there. But okay, so one more time, arpeggio. Okay, let's do the corresponding pentatonic scale, and it's gonna be a very familiar shape.

Okay, diatonic scale and blues scale again, very familiar shape here.

Okay, so one more time, there's our arpeggio, pentatonic scale, diatonic scale, and blues scale. Okay, so like I was doing, um, in the first lesson in this series here, we don't want to just learn these patterns and just learn these notes. I want to, you know, work on my technique and also our timing. We want to make it sound like music here, so I'm going to play this along with a Strum Machine backing track It's not going to be very fast, but I'm— again, I'm going to play the arpeggio and all 3 associated scale patterns. That'll sound like this. So that was our G shape. Let's go into our E shape here, and I'm just going to go through this stuff here. So our arpeggio, we're going to do Okay, and let's do the pentatonic scale. Okay, let's do our diatonic scale. Okay, and then let's do our blues scale. Okay, so there we go. So one more time, um, again, this is out of our E shape, and again, we're in C major here. We're in C major. So our arpeggio. Pentatonic scale, diatonic scale, and blues scale. Okay, so same deal as I did with the G shape here. I want to not only learn these patterns and know the notes, but I want to practice my technique and my timing. So let me play that along with the Strum Machine backing track. I'll do the arpeggio and the 3 associated scale patterns, and that'll sound like this. Okay, so one more. Let's jump up to the D shape of our CAGED system here. And again, we're in C major, so for the arpeggio, I'm gonna do— okay, so with the D shape, that's, you know, we're basing it off of our D chord down here, and we're just taking that triad. And I guess we could do it down here, but I'm gonna go ahead and do it up here. Okay, and instead of just—

I'm gonna add to help us cover a little bit more ground.

And so for our associated scale patterns where we've got— we could do, you know, some— but I don't want to do those because we already covered those in our C, um, in our C shape, and I covered that in the first, um, lesson in this series. So I want to do our associated scale patterns right here. So there's our arpeggio, our associated pentatonic scale right here. All right, diatonic scale and our blues scale. Okay, so one more time, arpeggio. Let's do pentatonic scale. Let's do diatonic scale.

And blues scale.

Okay, so what we want to do now, same deal as I did with the E shape and the G shape. I'm going to play each one of those along with a Strum Machine backing track. Again, this is in C major, and I'll do the arpeggio and those 3 associated scale patterns, and that'll sound like this. So there you have it. There is an introduction to the CAGED system just starting with C major. And I really would recommend anybody who's watching this, make sure that you get down all of these ideas just with the major chord first. Like I was saying at the beginning of the video, too many guitar students start obsessing over the whatabouts way too early. Just get down all of these ideas. Again, your arpeggios and your associated scale patterns. To get that down with one major chord first, with your C major chord first. And then once you've got that as your foundation, then if you want to do this stuff with minor chords or minor 7 flat 5 chords or dominant 7th chords, you can build on that. But you want to start with the major first. And remember what this is— this is fretboard roadmap. This is really, really, really mastering the territory of your guitar neck. This is a a great thing to learn in addition to the vocabulary-based stuff that I teach on this channel. And by that, licks, phrases, tunes, note-for-note solos, all of that good stuff. If you will learn the vocabulary and get a really good grip on the layout of your fretboard, it's going to put you in a great place. Remember that you can get the tabs for this lesson down in the video description and in the top pinned comment. I want to thank you for hanging out today, and I'll see you next time.