Revelations of the CAGED system

[Andrew Milner]

So I have decided to re-incorporate daily guitar practice since I feel I am getting stale at melodies and stuff. And I started with doing the 7 positions of the major scale which are fine, but for some reason, I am unable to link that well between forms.

However, everything seems to fall into place when I do improvs using the CAGED system. I can move up and down the guitar so easily.

So if any of you are feeling stuck at improvising melodies, the CAGED system might be a good starting point. Papa Gates does a great job of explaining it too .

 

[Jak Angelescu]

So I have decided to re-incorporate daily guitar practice since I feel I am getting stale at melodies and stuff. And I started with doing the 7 positions of the major scale which are fine, but for some reason, I am unable to link that well between forms.

However, everything seems to fall into place when I do improvs using the CAGED system. I can move up and down the guitar so easily.

So if any of you are feeling stuck at improvising melodies, the CAGED system might be a good starting point. Papa Gates does a great job of explaining it too .

He really, REALLY does. I think you summed up everything I feel about the CAGED system perfectly. It gets really fun to utilize once you get the hang of it!

 

[Mariler]

Definitely was a revelation to me too.

I knew CAGED existed but didn't really understand the purpose or how everything is linked on the fretboard until I watched Papa Gates lessons. Now a lot of things are starting to make sense to me. And made me want to delve into theory, which I had been kind of avoiding so far...

I'm still working on it slowly, it's a lot of work and I think I'm gonna stay in these lessons for a while. CAGED and learning the notes on the fretboard go hand in hand. And to be able to move up and down the fretboard finding the right notes is such a cool feeling, that's when your guitar speaks

 

[idssdi]

CAGED really is kind of the secret code to elevate your guitar playing. My guitar teacher pretty early on already told me that you can find the same scale all over the neck and I'm still grateful for that.

 

[idssdi]

i got sad when i realized there are only like 7 or 8 notes in music. the rest are all just octaves or something. is this theory right?

It's 12 but that's mostly due I the way we run out instruments nowadays. Technically, F# and Gb are two different things but because we tune our instruments in the way we do they have exactly the same frequency and are kind of the same.

 

[idssdi]

Sry, just checked again on my guitar, I guess it's 12. Isn't F# and Gb the same though? You just name it differently according to if you're playing it up or down the neck in your progression? I only just heard it like once or twice, that's kind of what I got from it. (pls, correct me if I'm wrong) I think tuning is just octaves, 6 strings=6 notes?+6 steps in between=squared?
Does changing Octaves count as changing notes?

P.S. I edited my original message

They are now but it wasn't how it used to be. Theory snobs are pretty particular about that.

Tuning isn't just octaves, you tune your guitar in fourths, E to A, A to D, D to G, B to E. Is all root to the fourth(or fifth to root). An octav is 12 semitones up or down, each next string besides the B is only 5 semitones up.

 

[chris_is_cool]

On a standard guitar, and keyboard, piano and many other instruments, F# and Gb have the same pitch, but they are not the same note! There are many reasons for that, but the most simple one comes from notating the major scale.
Consider the G Major scale. It is G A B C D E F# G (and then it starts again, as you correctly noted, the octave gets the same name again).
In musical notation, it looks like this:

Notice the # sign in front of the F to raise it by a half step. NOW, if we wanted to use Gb instead, the notes would be: G A B C D E Gb G. So now, we are missing an F (or a modification of it), which means that the line for F in the standard notation is completely unused, but now the line for G is used twice, once with a modifier (b), and once without. This would make notating any music in G major incredibly ugly, just because we have to choose for every note on the G line, whether it is a G or a Gb.

This is just one super simple argument of readability, there are countless more. And then there are more exotic instruments, where F# and Gb are literally different because of the "temperament" they use (guitars use equal temperament, which is what forces F# and Gb to be the same).

Hope this made some sense.