CAGED System Scales

CAGED system explained

The CAGED system is a way to see the whole guitar neck as five connected shapes. The letters stand for the open chords C, A, G, E and D. Each of those chords can be moved up the neck with a barre, and each version sits in its own area of the fretboard. The five areas overlap and always follow each other in the order C, A, G, E, D, then C again an octave higher. Once you know where a chord shape sits, you also know where the root, 3rd and 5th are, and which scale notes surround them.

The G major scale on the whole neck

G major has seven notes, G A B C D E F♯, built from the major scale pattern of whole and half steps: W W H W W W H. Here they are on every string up to fret 15, labelled by scale degree (1 is G, the root). Tap any dot to hear it.

That is a lot of dots. The CAGED system breaks them into five smaller boxes you can learn one at a time, each tied to a G chord shape you can already see on the neck.

The five G chord shapes

The five open chord shapes, C, A, G, E and D, can each be moved up the neck to play a G chord. Here they are in order from the nut:

The cards show, in order: the G shape (open G), the E shape at fret 3, the D shape at fret 5, the C shape at fret 7 and the A shape at fret 10. After the A shape comes the G shape again, at fret 12, and the cycle repeats an octave up.

Neighbouring shapes share notes. The E shape’s root on the D string at fret 5 is the same note the D shape is built on; the D shape’s root on the B string at fret 8 is shared with the C shape. That overlap is what joins the five boxes into one map of the neck.

The five scale positions

Each scale position is the chord shape plus the scale notes around it. The frets below are G major scale notes, string by string from low E to high e. They are the dots from the fretboard above, grouped by shape.

Each position holds all seven notes and spans four or five frets. The G shape at frets 12 to 15 is the open position moved up an octave: every fret number is 12 higher.

How to practise the positions

1. Play the chord shape first. Strum it, then find the G roots in it.
2. Play the scale from the lowest root to the highest root in the box, then back down. Say the degree numbers as you go if that helps you see them.
3. Play only 1, 3 and 5. Those dots are the chord itself: G, B and D. Playing them one at a time is a G major arpeggio, and it shows how the chord shape sits inside the scale.
4. Join two neighbours. Play up the E shape and into the D shape on the same strings, then back. Then D into C, and so on until you can run the whole neck.
5. Use it with a progression. Over G, C and D, aim for the chord tones of whichever chord is playing.

Start with the E shape and the A shape. They are the two standard barre chords, so you already know their roots from the low E and A strings.

CAGED system cheat sheet

The five shapes and where their root notes sit, in any key. Strings are numbered 6 (low E) to 1 (high e).

Find the chord’s root on one of those strings, then use that shape.

Moving CAGED to any key

The order of shapes never changes: C, A, G, E, D, then C again. What changes is which shape you start with at the nut. That is the open chord of the key, or the shape whose root falls nearest the nut.

To play the major scale in another key, pick the shape you want, find the root of the new key on that shape’s root string, and the whole box moves with it. The fingering of each box stays the same in every key; only the starting fret changes. The fretboard map draws the scale of any key across the whole neck.

CAGED with minor chords and minor scales

The minor scale has the same notes as its relative major, so E minor uses exactly the dots shown above for G major. The positions are the same; you treat E as the home note instead of G. The key of E minor page shows its chords.

For minor chord shapes, the open Am, Em and Dm move up the neck the same way as their major versions: the Em shape and Am shape become the two minor barre chords. The minor versions of the C and G shapes exist too, but they are awkward to finger and rarely used as full chords.

Is CAGED the only way?

No. Another common map is three notes per string, which gives seven positions instead of five and suits fast scale runs. CAGED stays popular because it links scales directly to chord shapes a guitarist already plays, which makes it easy to see where the chord tones are while soloing over chords. Both systems cover the same notes; they just divide the neck differently. The pentatonic scale fits the same five-shape map with two of the seven notes left out.