pentatonic, CAGED etc clear guide and maybe exercises

[hubcapsc]

>>The answer was, you have to just flat out learn the fretboard...

I didn't know what CAGED was until I ran into dansm's CAGED
writeups on the Internet ten or fifteen years ago.

I reverse engineered the pentatonic scale about 40 years ago while
trying to play along with Let It Be. I perceived it as "the five shapes"
and knew it had something to do with keys. Years later I discovered
the cowboy chord associated with each shape.

Then I found dansm's CAGED writeup and thought how brilliant it
was to see all that stuff I'd "discovered" written down somewhere.

The answer might be that the fretboard, music in general really, can't
be spoon fed to you, you must discover it yourself somehow. Formal
written music and CAGED and TAB and stuff are ways for us to
communicate with each other. I think CAGED is a compelling way
to describe something that is both real and abstract.

-Mike

[Mr. Jelly]

Originally Posted by Mr. Jelly

Maybe this has been stated already. Learn where the root note is on the cords you use up the neck. Use that as the entry point to the scale system you are learning.

Everyone learns a little differently. Most often when I try to learn something I make my own learning tools. Pick a key and sit down and create your own graphs etc. Just the act of doing that will teach you something. Pick a chord like D in first position cowboy chord. Find the root. Make a drawing that has R where the root is. Put in the scale you want from that. Practice that for awhile. Next make a drawing of a D chord up the neck as an A style chord. Mark the root and do the same thing. You can do the same thing off the D string at the nut. The thing is by doing these types of things a person starts to conceptualize the fret board in informing ways that expand your knowledge and playing skill.

[stanron]

Perhaps some peoples' expectations of CAGED are too great. The student needs to bring theoretical knowlege or musical ideas to CAGED to get any benefit from it. The knowlege or ideas are not there themselves. Take JonPR's diagram from post #3.

|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|---|
|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|---|-R-|
|-5-|---|---|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|
|---|---|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|
|---|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|
|-3-|---|---|-5-|---|---|---|---|-R-|---|---|---|-3-|---|
 \_____C_______/     \______G______/     \_____D_______/
             \____A____/         \____E____/     \_____C......

This shows, as tbeltrans' last post says, how the five 'cowboy' chord shapes can be moved up the neck to provide different versions of the chord C. Move the whole pattern up the fretboard two frets and you get five versions of the chord D.Another two frets and you get versions of E and so on.

If you don't know the five 'cowboy' chord shapes the CAGED system is not the way to learn them. If you know the shapes then the diagram shows how they link up.

The same applies to scales, melodies and improvising. You have to have the knowlege or ideas first. Then CAGED can show how to apply them to the instrument.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by MC5C

A friend of mine was doing a Master's thesis on guitar pedagogy, which is kind of how people learn the guitar as opposed to how people teach the guitar, and she took 2 dozen players, from near beginners to quite good players, and ran them through a couple of dozen learning systems to find out what system taught the fretboard the best. We did skill/time tests once a week, after practicing a different system for a set time period each day for a week. So lots of players, lots of systems (including things like Segovia scales in positions, and boxes, and CAGED). She included testing highly skilled professional players as a benchmark. The skill/time test was find random pairs of notes on each string as fast as you can, like find C# and Ab on second string, then find some other random pair on some other string, until you'd found all 12 notes and used all 6 strings. Which in itself points out that all the notes are on all the strings. If one system worked better than any of the others, statistical analysis would find that out. At the end of the mission, she did her math and published the findings - not one system worked any better than the others, and - critically - none of them actually worked much at all. The answer was, you have to just flat out learn the fretboard, where all the notes are on all the strings, and then you know the fretboard. The problem with the systems is they get you half way there. You might be able to play all the scales in all the CAGED shapes, but you don't learn what all the notes are on the strings that you are playing, you just tend to learn the shapes. Or you can play scales up and down the neck like Segovia, but again, you don't learn the notes. Anyway, that was my experience with learning the fretboard. I presume she wrote her Master's Thesis on it and passed, because she's now teaching at our local university and finishing her PhD in something I can't pronounce.

The part marked in bold is really the answer, regardless of how you get there.

The exercise that worked the best for me was one I got from Ted Greene's "Chord Chemistry"...

1. Pick a note at random on the fretboard.
2. Identify what that note is (i.e. C, Eb, etc.) by letter name.
3. Find that note all over the fretboard in the following manner:

- Find the lowest position on the 6th string where that note occurs and then go along each string in turn, finding that note until you end up on the first string playing that note at the highest position it occurs on your fretboard.

- Then, retrace the process in reverse going back down along each string until you again reach the first position of the note as you found it on the 6th string.

Pick just one note at random every day and do this same exercise. At first, it may take you 10 minutes or so. Over a period of time, it gets easier until the whole thing takes maybe 20 seconds at most.

Doing this, you will soon begin to see the whole guitar fretboard (not just little CAGED boxes) as easily as you can see the notes on a piano keyboard.

The next step is to learn how scales are spelled and then how chords are spelled and derived from scales.

Once you have this knowledge, you can create any voicing of any chord or play any scale in any key, anywhere on the fretboard and you are not boxed in by ANY system.

Edit: With what I described here, you don't need to buy anything, no books or DVDs or subscribe to some site. All this information about scales and chords is easily and freely available on the net. But then again, we do seem to like to spend money, so there are plenty of products out there that will gladly charge whatever you are willing to pay to get the same information.

Regardless of how much or little you decide to spend, you still have to put in the time though.

Tony

[Song]

Pete Huttlinger taught us to learn every note on the board and the major scale.
His DVDs "A Guitarists Guide to Better Practicing" & "Wonderful World of Chords" if adhered to diligently will yield good technique.

[rllink]

I read this thread and got pretty excited. So I asked my guitar teacher to teach me the CAGED system and he told me that we went past it a while ago. We just didn't have a name for it, but essentially we were doing that. He said that it isn't magic, it is just basic guitar playing. So I guess I learned it and didn't know it.

[Monts]

Originally Posted by rllink

I read this thread and got pretty excited. So I asked my guitar teacher to teach me the CAGED system and he told me that we went past it a while ago. We just didn't have a name for it, but essentially we were doing that. He said that it isn't magic, it is just basic guitar playing. So I guess I learned it and didn't know it.

I'm not sure what your instructor might be referring to... I mean I guess if he just means connecting the fretboard, but the CAGED system is rather specific in terms of procedure. It's not really something you just blow through without knowing that you did.

[rllink]

Originally Posted by Monts

I'm not sure what your instructor might be referring to... I mean I guess if he just means connecting the fretboard, but the CAGED system is rather specific in terms of procedure. It's not really something you just blow through without knowing that you did.

I wouldn't know. I'm just relating what he said. I've been taking lessons from him for a year and he has taught me a lot. If he doesn't think that I need to dive into it I guess I'm good with that.

[hatamoto]

Originally Posted by rllink

I wouldn't know. I'm just relating what he said. I've been taking lessons from him for a year and he has taught me a lot. If he doesn't think that I need to dive into it I guess I'm good with that.

I think your instructor is just using different terminologies and using some parts of the CAGED approach.

I for one don't use all the terminologies. I don't really see the fretboard it as the shapes via CAGED, but the approach is still the same.

[tbeltrans]

Originally Posted by rllink

I wouldn't know. I'm just relating what he said. I've been taking lessons from him for a year and he has taught me a lot. If he doesn't think that I need to dive into it I guess I'm good with that.

This is quite plausible. I have a number of video lessons from Barry Greene, the jazz guitarist. In the lesson on major scales, for example, he mentions that at Berklee College of Music in Boston, he was taught 12 major scale positions. He felt that this was unnecessary, and distilled it down to 5.

Guess what? Those 5 positions are exactly the 5 CAGED major scale forms within the 5 CAGED chord forms.

However, he never mentions this fact, nor does he ever talk about the CAGED system. So, what rllink is saying is perfectly plausible because whether formally taught or not, the CAGED forms and associated scales are always there, and whether a player/teacher recognizes or even cares about that is up to that person.

To me, the CAGED system, once seen, is difficult to "unsee", but that is just me. I wouldn't doubt that there are many very accomplished players who use elements of it without ever giving it a thought or even caring that such a system exists.

Different people, teachers or not, will view the CAGED system differently. Some will consider it a limitation, while others will see it as being very helpful for visualizing the fretboard. I see it as a kind of "training wheels", useful in the beginning but soon discarded in favor of seeing the entire fretboard free of boxes and patterns. I don't see it as a necessary step to learning about the guitar. For some it can help, while for others another approach might be more suitable.

The late Joe Pass, another well known and respected jazz guitarist, taught the CAGED system at his seminars, but you really didn't see it at all in his playing, nor in any interviews discussing his approach to the guitar. I suspect that for him, it was just something to teach.

Many guitar players at his level had been playing for so long that it is probably difficult to relate what they do in technical terms that can be relayed to students at some seminar, and the CAGED system becomes a convenient thing to fill in those gaps with.

Tony