C-A-G-E-D Chords

Caged cords are movable chord patterns that will help you to find most occurances of a chord on the neck. For instance, if you want to find all of the C chords on the guitar you would use the caged system to locate them. The caged chords are chords that all guitarists should know already. They are C, A, G, E, D in that order.

For this system we are not really interested in the names of the basic chords just the shape. Using just the shape of the basic C chord and moving it up the fretboard one fret at a time gives us 12 chords. Note, when moving up the neck you will have to change the shape slightly to maintain the form . Moving up one fret at a time will give you: C, C#(Dflat), D, D#(Eflat), E, F, F#(Gflat), G, G#(Aflat), A, A#(Bflat), B, and finally again at C starting at the 13th fret. The same can be done with the modified open chord forms of A, G, E, and D.

The way you would apply the system is as follows. We will demonstrate with the C chord. The first occurance on the fretboard is the common C chord . This is the first form. To find the next C chord use the A-shape form starting from the note C. After that one, the G-shape forms the next C chord. The E-shape forms the next and finally the D-shape forms the last C chord.