CAGED System Explained: Five Shapes That Cover the Neck

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The CAGED system treats the guitar neck as five movable chord shapes, named after the open chords C, A, G, E and D. Slide any one of them up the fretboard and the same finger pattern produces a different chord, so every major chord has a fingering in each of the five shapes. Read up the neck and the shapes follow one another in the order C, A, G, E, D, which is what the acronym records.

#Five open chords that become five movable shapes

Each open chord below is a fingering that can be moved up the neck. The strings are listed from low E to high E, with x for a muted string and 0 for an open one.

The root string is the string that carries the chord’s name note in the open chord. It matters because the root moves with the shape, and the root string tells you which note to count from. For the E shape you count from the low E string; for the A shape you count from the A string. Once you know the root string, the rest of the shape follows from the fingering.

#A moved shape takes a new name

Every fret is one semitone higher than the fret below it. When a shape moves up one fret, every note in it moves up one semitone, so the chord keeps its quality and changes its root. A major shape stays major wherever it goes, and a minor shape stays minor.

The E shape makes this easy to check. Barred at the fifth fret, it sounds A major, because the low E string at fret 5 is A2:

The same shape at the eighth fret sounds C major, since fret 8 on the low E string is C3. The chord’s name comes from counting the fret on its root string. The shape’s original name, E, only tells you which fingering you are using.

The barred E and A shapes are the two most common ways to move a chord this way, and the barre chord article gives each one’s fingering and root in a table.

#The E and A shapes move with the least change

The E and A shapes are the two most practical to move. When you barre them, the barre finger covers their open strings, and the other fingers keep the pattern of the open chord. The C, G and D shapes can also be moved, but their fingering changes more from one position to the next, so they are usually learned in their open form first. A capo moves every shape without any change of fingering, which is a different tool for a similar job, covered in the capo and transposition article.

#Finding one chord in several places

C major is a good test, because three of its five shapes are easy to place on the neck:

Play them in that order and the chords sound almost identical:

Each chord contains only the pitch classes C, E and G. The bass note is C3 in all three. The second-lowest note changes from E3 in the open shape to G3 in the A shape, and the barred E shape adds a C5 at the top. The shapes differ in where the notes sit, not in what they are. The G and D shapes place C major in the remaining two regions of the neck.

The distances in the table are the whole method. The open C shape sits at position 0, and its root is C already. The A shape is moved three frets, so its root has risen from A to C, because A plus three semitones is C. The E shape is moved eight frets, so its root has risen from E to C, because E plus eight semitones is C. Each entry is a count of semitones from the shape’s own root to the chord you want.

The same check works for D major, which is the A shape at fret 5 (x57775) and the E shape at fret 10 (10-12-12-11-10-10). A plus five semitones is D, and E plus ten semitones is D. Practise one chord this way before you try a new one: name the shape, count the semitones on its root string, and say the result.

#Minor shapes follow the same arithmetic

Open Am (x02210) and Em (022000) work exactly like the major shapes. Moved three frets, the A minor shape becomes C minor, x35543, with its root on the A string at fret 3. The E minor shape moved to fret 3 is G minor, 355333, with its root on the low E string. The only difference from the major shapes is the third, which sits one semitone lower. In the fingering this shows up as a single finger moved down one fret: the A minor shape is the A major shape with the second-string finger moved from fret 2 to fret 1, and the E minor shape is the E major shape with the third-string finger moved from fret 1 to open.

#How the shapes connect

The order is not arbitrary. Each shape contains a root, a third and a fifth, and as you move from one shape to the next, those three chord tones are assigned to different strings. Neighbouring shapes share notes, so a player can slide from one to the next without losing the chord. The open C chord and the A shape at fret 3 both contain C, E and G, as the example above shows; what differs is which string each note sits on.

After the D shape, the sequence starts again an octave higher. That repeating cycle is why the five shapes are taught together rather than as five separate chords.

#Using the shapes to organise scales

The same map helps with scales. A major scale or a pentatonic pattern can be drawn as a box in the region of each chord shape, so the chord you are playing points you towards a scale box nearby. The pentatonic boxes are covered in pentatonic and blues scales. For now the point is that scale positions and chord shapes sit in the same parts of the neck, so knowing one tells you where to look for the other.

#Where this misleads people

The first error is treating the shape’s name as the chord’s name. A barred E shape is an E shape, but it sounds whatever its root string says. At fret 8 it is C, and at fret 12 it is E again.

The second error is learning the five positions without learning the note names. The system tells you how a shape moves; it does not tell you which note the root is. Without counting from the root string, you can play the moves but you cannot name them, and a player who cannot name the chord cannot transpose it or read a chord chart. The note names are covered in guitar fretboard note names.

The third error is assuming that five shapes cover every chord. They map major and minor triads well. Seventh chords need their own shapes, such as the open E7 (020100) and A7 (x02020), and those move with their own fingerings.

#What to do with it

Play the E shape barred at frets 1, 3, 5, 7 and 8. Before each strum, say the root aloud by counting from the low E string: fret 1 is F, fret 3 is G, fret 5 is A, fret 7 is B and fret 8 is C. Do not look at a chart while you do this.

Repeat the exercise with the A shape, counting from the A string instead. Fret 1 is B flat, fret 3 is C, fret 5 is D and fret 7 is E.

Then play the open C shape, the A shape at fret 3 and the E shape at fret 8, one after the other, and listen for the same three pitch classes in each. Keep going until you can say the root before the chord has sounded. That habit, more than the shapes themselves, is what makes the system usable on a bandstand.

Questions

What does CAGED stand for?

CAGED is the set of letters for the five open chords C, A, G, E and D. Each one is a fingering that can be moved up the neck, and the shapes follow one another in that order as you climb.

Do I need the CAGED system to play barre chords?

No, but it makes barre chords much easier to learn. Once you know which open shape a barre chord comes from, you can work out its name by counting frets from the root string, instead of memorising each position separately.

How do I find a chord in a different position on the guitar?

Choose an open shape that contains the chord, then move it so that its root lands where you want it. For the E shape, the root is on the low E string, so the fret number is the number of semitones from E up to the target note.

Does the CAGED system work for minor chords?

Yes. The same idea applies using open Am and Em as the minor shapes. A minor shape moves by the same fret arithmetic as a major one, and the result is a minor chord with its root on the fret you chose.