How To Use Basic CAGED To Solo Effortlessly Over Chord Changes - Lead Guitar Lesson

in this video I'm going to show you how to use the Caged system and combine it with the pentatonic scale to play over chord changes typically when you're first learning how to solo you're basically just playing the pentatonic scale along to the key of the song what we're going to be doing here is we're going to be using the cage system to actually be able to Target notes from within the chords and it's actually a lot easier to do than you might think by the way I just released a little handbook called the guitarist companion it's got a bunch of cheat sheets for like all the cores inside of every single key all the major skills all the intervals and a bunch of other helpful stuff if you want to grab it for free just follow the link at the top of the description so there are only two things you really need to know to get through this lesson the first one of those things is the basic minor pentatonic scale shape so we will be in the key of C major to start or a minor and the scale shape looks like [Music] this and you're only going to need a very basic understanding of caged and all caged is is an acronym that represents all the different types of chord shapes we can make on the guitar so that means every single chord that we play anywhere on the fretboard it's going to come from a chord shape based on the C the a the G the E and the D and what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you how to play a very little version of every single chord from within a key inside and around that pentatonic scale shape so that means that while you're in that position playing that pentatonic scale playing a solo you'll also be able to see and visualize every single chord from within that same key so in our key of C major a minor we have seven chords that are naturally occurring within the key chords we call dionic chords and these chords are all going to sound good together right so chords like F major G major a minor C Major D Minor right those all sound nice cuz they're all from the same key and with our basic understanding of caged we're going to be able to play all seven of those chords inside of this pentatonic scale shape so chord number one our C major the shape is going to look like this right right on top of that minor pentatonic scale and this little three note chord is called a Triad call it a Triad so this is a C major chord or a C major Triad and you might be wondering where exactly does this come from in caged well technically we're just playing a little piece of the a shape right the a shape c major chord uh also we're playing a little bit of the g- [Music] shape so right it it exists in both of those shap sh and that'll be the case for all the shapes I'm going to show you here is they're going to be small little versions of the larger shape chord number two is going to look like this again a nice little shape existing inside that minor pentatonic scale and it's coming from this chord right here that bar chord that you probably already know we're playing the little one like this so it's technically an a shape right cuz it's a little a minor shape right there and you can see with this shape we're actually playing notes that aren't exactly in the pentatonic scale and that's cuz because we're technically playing notes from the major/minor scale so a pentatonic scale has five notes a minor C major pentatonic is the five note version we remove two notes from the major or minor scales so the full major scale the full minor scale they both have seven notes we're just adding those two extra notes back into the scale to be able to play these chords next up we've got chord number three which looks like this and the numbers are really important here right this is an E minor chord it's the three chord of the key of C maor but the numbers are what are important because when we move this into different Keys the whole shape our pentatonic scale all the shapes are going to remain the same which means the three chord in our new key is also going to look like this just in a new position so again those numbers are really important and believe it or not this little Triad here actually comes from a C minor shape a shape you don't see used too often but technically that's what this is now for chord number four I like this little shape right here it's just a little D shape you can play like this right so you recognize that as your D chord it is the four chord of C major so technically that is an F chord right then moving to the five chord the G chord we just take that exact same shape and we just slide it up two [Music] Frets just looks like that again we're living right inside that pentatonic scale but we do have some added notes which again are from the major/minor scale next up we've got our sixth chord shape which is an A Minor here and it's going to look like [Music] this just like that you can play it you don't have to bar if that's not comfortable for you I usually bar it and it's just coming from an E minor shape right that creates our a minor bar chord but we're only playing those three notes onto our seven chord not to be confused with seventh chords uh but the seventh chord from within the key this is actually the weird chord it's a diminished chord technically and it usually doesn't get used that often in music especially like pop music um it's more of like a passing chord it'll sometimes be used as uh so the shape I'm going to show you here is a for note shape it's going to look like [Music] this okay technically that right there is a B minor 7 flat 5 like I said you're probably never really going to use it but it's worth knowing anyway okay so now what we have is we have our pentatonic scale and we have our individual chord shapes from the key so now we're going to combine these two things and when you solo or just play over top of a song you're playing over top of a chord progression and for a lot of guitar players the way their mind kind of works is when they are playing rhythm guitar they are playing the chords they're following the chords in that chord progression but then when they go to solo and play lead they're just playing the scale right and they're not thinking so much about the chord part what we're going to start doing is we're going to start paying attention to the chords and so what we can do now is as the chords come along and as they change we can play that chord that little version of the chord from within in our shape and the idea here is on especially on the chord change so when it lands on the new chord is to hit one 2 three of the notes from that chord within this scale shape that you've just learned then as you start getting comfortable with that you're going to start adding notes from the pentatonic scale in between so the idea would be here comes the next chord change I land on what we call our one of our chord tones so one of the notes from within the chord maybe I play that play one of the other notes fromin the chord then I do a little pentatonic lick and then the next chord change is coming and I'm going to land on the chord tones from the little shape that I've learned on that next chord so I'm going to show you all this in action by putting on a track and playing along to it now there's something you need to know that this track is actually in a different key so we're in the key of A minor SL C major they're the same key they're just relative major and minor keys but we're going to be going into the key of G major and what that means is all of our shapes have to get shifted into our new key now if you have an acoustic guitar this might make this a little challenging just because of where we're going on the fretboard but if you have an electric guitar it's no problem because to be in the key of G major we have to slide this whole thing up to the 12th fret to know what key this shape is in we look at our pinky finger on the low E string for the shape that we already know our pinky finger tells us the major key and our pointer finger tells us the relative minor key so this is a g note right so that means this is G major slash E minor the same key relative major and minor key so all of our shapes are going to remain the same they're just moved into this new position and that's why the numbers matter so much because we have to be thinking in numbers more than just the actual chords we're playing okay here comes the track okay so the first thing we need to do is identify the chords uh I'm going to assume that you you already know what the chords are of the song you're going to be playing over I have videos that show you how to figure them out if you don't know them for all the tracks that I'm going to give you access to in this lesson uh I'll have written out what the actual chords and the key are to make it easy so we're in the key of G major and the chords here are going from G major to C major the whole track okay so C major to G major we're in the key of G major that means we're playing the one chord to the four chord okay so if I were to Ed my shapes inside my pentatonic scale one chord coming up here it's these [Music] ones right they fit to my four chord this little D shape and just practice going back and forth here this track is definitely a good one for just getting the feel of it cuz it's nice and slow we're going 1 to four pretty simple and then what we know we can do is play the pentatonic scale over this [Music] so sounds nice right and then we can combine them together this might be tough so we play [Music] this land on the shap [Music] and you don't have to play the whole chord when you land you can just play one note so I can just play one of the random notes from the [Music] chord and then if you know more stuff from pentatonics so connected scales and things like that you can start adding those [Music] in and that is it the idea is hitting those chord tones and knowing where they are when you're playing over certain chord when you're playing over the one chord when you're playing over the four chord and in other tracks five chord the six chord the two chord the three chord even the seventh chord and knowing how to quickly locate the notes while still being in a comfy pentatonic position now I'll have this track along with a few others available for you to download totally free uh there'll be a link at the top of the description if you want to grab them and along with those tracks I'll actually have a little information sheet for you so that you can see what the chords are what the changes are because obviously this one's simple right we go from a one to a four the other ones are are not complicated but they are going to add a few more things into the mix just make sure you remember my tip about positioning yourself in the correct key so where your pinky is is the major key where your pointer finger is is the minor key while using this pentatonic shape so if I need to play in the key of E major I play this shape right here because my pinky will land on an E note my pointer finger will land on a c Shar note meaning that my relative minor key is C minor so this would be E major C minor one of the tracks is in this key so this is where you would position that and it's going to throw a couple other chords into the mix so just be prepared to play those other shapes you've learned as well so as far as next steps I think it's pretty obvious you want to be doing all this same stuff over different chord progressions in different keys so I'd recommend grabbing those Jam tracks down below starting with those they'll be a really good place for you to start one other thing I'd recommend is checking out my lesson called improvising guitar solos for complete beginners a lot of the stuff at the beginning is going to be pretty simple you're probably already going to know it but a lot of the stuff that comes a little bit later I think will be really helpful for you I'll have a link to that up in the middle of the screen for you if you want to check it out thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next [Music] one

Channel: Andrew Clarke

Views: 108,891

Keywords: caged system, guitar lesson, lead guitar lesson, how to solo on guitar, intermediate guitar lesson, music theory guitar, music theory for beginners, pentatonic scale, caged and pentatonic positions, caged system and pentatonic scales, andrew clarke, andrew clarke guitar, free backing tracks for guitar, guitar backing track, guitar solo lesson, guitar lessons, guitar lessons for intermediate players

Id: wXZGcgYysNs

Length: 12min 18sec (738 seconds)

Published: Fri Jan 19 2024