The CAGED System: C Shape - 9 Essential tools that live within the C Shape - Guitar Lesson - EP556

okay well I'm really excited about this week's lesson this is going to be a total breakthrough for for a lot of you it was for me even as I was putting this together this is one of those missing lesson videos that just doesn't exist on the internet at least not yet I haven't seen anyone do it quite like this uh and so uh I don't know why I haven't done this but what we're going to be doing is we're going to be talking about the Caged system now don't roll your eyes just yet if even if you're not a fan you're going to dig this uh the cage system is just a way of organizing the fretboard and so we're going to be talking about one of those shapes the Caged has is five it's five shapes c a g e d we're going to be looking at the C shape and we're going to be putting every so think of that as a box and I'm going to be putting everything I can think of that's useful into that box well we're not going to put everything but we're going to put all your Basics things that you need to be able to improvise into that box major chords minor chords actually I've boiled it down to nine nine things major chords minor chords major pentatonic scale minor pentatonic scale major scale natural minor scale what else dominant 7 chord major 7 chord uh and mixian mode I think I got all of them um so we're going to be looking at all of those in one position and once you can see this in one position it's going to start to illuminate the entire fretboard and Beyond just being able to play them I'm going to show you how to do that but I want you to be able to hear them that's even more important than playing them so we're going to talk about that what is the sound of a major 7 what is the the sound of a dominant seven how are they different all that stuff once you can hear it and you sort of know where it's at you've got everything you need and so uh we're going to break all of this down actually we're going to cover everything in this video there are some extras that come with this lesson uh if you'd like to get the PDF downloadable which has all nine of these things we're going to talk about in one position in that C position you can get that you can also get towards the end of this we're going to pull it all together into a nice little sort of a practice little song it's not much of a song but it's more of a practice a way to practice and hear all of these things uh so we're going to have a Jam track that goes with that and a um the Tabler for that so you can get all of those extra things by going to activemelody.com go to the weekly lessons page and do a search for EP 556 okay let's start off and talk about when I say C position what is that um so I'll be very brief on this the cage system is made up of the chords you learn in first position those first chords we all learned the cowboy chords c a g e and D so with the C position if I were to take that c chord and just slide it up doesn't work right the reason it doesn't work is because when I play a C chord here two of the notes are uh behind the nut here they're open strings so to play those if I were to move it up I'm going to have to Bar where that would be to replace the nut with my finger like a little Capo right right there so I can move that up and we're going to move everything up to here so that I'm when I'm playing up here I'm playing an E chord and everything we're going to be doing is off the E chord E major E minor we'll get into that now don't worry if you can't make this chord we're not going to be making it I'm just showing you where this is coming from so when I talk about the C shape that's what I mean by it you can see these three fingers are making that shape so uh when I'm making that shape if you look at the Frets I'm between I'm between the fourth fret and theeven seventh fret so everything we're going to be doing is between the fourth fret and the seventh fret everything all those things I listed out are going to be in that uh area there between those Frets okay so the first of those things on that list is the major chord and that is how you make your major chord now when I play a C chord shape like this I don't usually use my pinky I usually just play it like this and play that little Triad or sometimes I just play it like this and that looks like the D shape right but either one of these that I'm playing is an E chord this is an E chord and this is an E chord now how do I know that's an E chord I skip that part well when I'm go let's go back to this when I'm making this there are two hints to let me know that this is an E chord one where my pinky is seventh fret fifth string that's an E note ah okay e note with my pinky means that's an E chord the other hint is on the fifth fret second string that's also an E note so inside of this shape here fifth string second string have my two e's so if I want to find an F chord but play it with the c shape I just find my f on either the fifth string or the second string so once I find it which is here I just use my pinky and then I build the chord that way and once I get that I have my bearings now I have my box and all this stuff we're going to talk about lives in that box let's get back to e okay so that's the first chord now the next thing we're going to connect to this is the major scale the E major scale we're going to start here on this seventh fret fifth string this e note and we're going to walk it up like [Music] this that's one octave of my E major scale and you can just follow the tab I don't have time to call out each string but you you can follow it remember if you've got that PDF file you have all of this in that as well so we can keep going from here and play another little piece of that scale we're not finishing it we're not going all the way up to the top of the octave but we're we're adding those notes so now we [Music] have now let's go down now we can keep going down there's some more notes we can add below this so let's walk it all the way down to there so now we have those notes as well so all of that is between the fourth fret and the seventh fret and it's all the e major scale so now we have two of the things uh on our list there we have our major chord and our major scale if we have our major scale we also have our major pentatonic scale remember the major pentatonic scale is the same as your major scale we just get rid of two of the notes from the major scale so we're going to get rid of the fourth interval and the seventh interval and that gives us our major pentatonic scale [Music] this would be major pentatonic scale pattern four for those of you that know the pattern number system of your pentatonic scales this would be pattern four of your major pentatonic scale so now we have three things we have our chord we have our major pentatonic [Music] scale we've got our major scale we've also got our major seven chord so check this out a isn't that a beautiful sounding chord it's the same as your major chord we're just going to add the seventh interval so when you play your major chord you're playing your one your three and your five those are the numbers of your major scale by the way 1 2 3 4 5 you play 1 3 5 and that is your major chord but if we go up to S 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 and we add the seventh with that you have that pretty dreamy sound and so um that this the first thing I want to point out is that seven sound if you want to work that in you're playing even if you're playing lead you just have to hit on that note and it's an easy note to find because it's one behind the root so if this is my root that's my e you just slide down one fret that's the seven sound you can play the chord in there or you can play the arpeggio um but either way we're looking at at that inside of our C shape now that's an E major 7 chord played in the C shape all right so I'm going to lump those first four things we learned under an umbrella and we'll just call it major those are all major sounds now the next little umbrella we're going to look at is dominant 7 sounds so the first thing we're going to learn is our dominant 7 chord our e that's your E7 chord now E7 is different than E major 7 that always confused me and if you want a deeper live on that um the essential Theory course that you have as a premium member at active Melody I I talk about that the difference between a major 7even and a dominant 7even and the whole thing but a really simple way to describe that dominant 7 chord or seven chord is remember with our major 7even chord we had the 1 35 and the Seven well for the dominant 7even we have the 1 35 and the flat 7even that's it so it's there's our 1 three and five there's the seven right but we flat the seven so it's down here now that's hard to do with my fingers I don't I can't really do that so what you end up doing is you find uh another place to play that oh yeah here it is here on the uh seventh fret third string so now I can play this now I realize I've eliminated the fifth but that's okay and remember when you're playing chords you can you can you don't have to play always play the root third fifth 7eventh or flat 7 you can just play some of those notes because if the band is playing you know they're going to cover the rest of it as long as I've got the flat seven in there and the third interval those are really the only two you really need I mean the rest of it you can you can even throw out the root I could just get by with those two notes and and it'll color it in that dominant seven sort of sound but I can hope you can see that I'm making this chord shape here in that C position and this really that's my C that's looks exactly like if I I were to play C7 down in first position if I were to play that and just slide that all the way up it would look like that and that's an E7 right there's my e note there's my e note and there's the E7 okay now there's a corresponding scale that fits perfectly with the dominant 7even chord and that is the mixian scale or mixian mode and it sounds like [Music] this and all it is is your major scale but you flat the seven just like you did with the chord basically you just get up to the seventh 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 that's where you would go but you flat it and you play it like that so that's your mixian um scale and if you want to work that sound into your lead you just take your root your e in this case and you go down two Frets to get that sound right it's different than the dreamy sound of the major 7 totally different sound and some of you are going well well when would you use this Mixel and you use it all the time now I could have put this in under the major uh chord because you can actually play Mixel liian scale over a major chord too it doesn't have to only be a seven chord it fits best over a seven chord because it's they've both got that flat seven but if the band was just playing an E chord like this you could totally throw in mixian and in fact that happens all the time in Blue Grass and and blues jam bands rock all that kind of stuff so that's what's going on with the the the two dominant seven sounds you got your dominant 7 chord and then the dominant 7 scale which is your mixian scale um okay now let's look at the final uh umbrella and we're going to call this the minor umbrella so let's now look at an E minor chord now remember when we played a major chord it was the 1 three and the five of your major scale minor chord is one flat three and five so we go one 3 5 right now you flat the third so now it sounds like this so that's a minor that's an E minor chord in the C position now I don't ever play my I don't ever play this this is awkward in fact it wasn't until I was putting this together that I even sort of discovered this little Triad just never use it what I play instead is this this is one I use all the time and so that's the same shape as your D7 chord in first position it looks like that at least from your from a finger perspective but I've got my ring finger there on the fifth fret second string to do that so that little Triad is my E minor chord now I could add my pinky up here on the seventh fret first string and play that note I could also play it like this if I rearrange my fingers and put my index finger on the third thir fret first string that's a very common uh voicing for that chord too now the only reason I'm not including this into this is because this one note is out of the box a little bit I'm trying to stay between the fourth fret and the seventh fret so uh just to sort of keep the everything concise but you could totally make this chord that way as well uh but the core of that chord is this that sound so just remember if you want to find this in the future you've got to find your e note on the second string and put your ring finger there to do the minor chord and then you get that now let's play the minor scale we're going to play the natural minor scale we're going to start down here seventh fret fifth string and we're going to walk it up like [Music] this that's your natural minor scale so it's your one and two out of your major scale then you flat the third flat the sixth flat the seventh so it's a flat third flat sixth flat 7even now from here watch this now I realize I'm stepping out of the box on that just sometimes that happens these notes do spill out of the box a little here and there but if we walk this down you'll recognize this [Music] pattern right you've seen that before and that's because these patterns are all the same they're just different modes of each other so you just keep reusing the same shapes I don't want to get in turn this into a modes lesson but that's really that's why now I can keep going down from here I can go and play those notes as well so let's walk it all the way up from the bottom string all the way up to the top string and then walk it back [Music] down so that's my E minor scale my e natural minor scale now inside of that natural minor scale is your minor pentatonic scale and what we do with that is the same thing we did with our major scale we're just going to get rid of two of the notes from that natural minor scale and we'll have our minor pentatonic scale so in this case we're going to get rid of the second interval and the sixth interval so it sounds like [Music] this now that should look familiar if you're familiar with your pentatonic scales this would be pattern three of your minor pentatonic scale so just file that away pattern three minor pentatonic scale is inside of that c shape right so all of this is e stuff though so that's the E minor pentatonic scale so everything we've been talking about has been for E it's been the E major scale the E major 7 chord E mixian scale and all of that same with the minor stuff uh but we're using the C shape and hopefully you're starting to see the power of how organized this is so everything that we've been talking about has fit into one box so this is a real easy way to file away or to to put you know put labels on the label on the box is a c we're calling this the C- shape it has nothing to do with C it's just a label we have to call it something and it started with that you know first position C so that's why it's called the C shape from there it has nothing to do with C it's just a label and inside that box we can put all of this stuff you've got also got here's a little sidebar a little extra you've got the major or you've got your nine chord so there's my E9 chord up here on that seventh fret first three strings little Triad there and then my E6 chord would which would be here a little stair step shape fourth fret first string fifth fret second string sixth fret third string so I'll just throw those in you can do what you want with those I didn't put those in the Swiss army knife not yet I'm just trying to get the core essential things all right so everything we looked at was in an e what if I wanted to do it all in a different Key Well the nice thing about this is there's no open string so we can just shift our hand up or down the neck so if I wanted to do everything in FP for example I just find my F sharp on either the fifth string or the second string remember going back to the beginning of this video so I'll find it with my pinky there on that fifth string that's my F sharp note there's my F sharp chord using the c-shape oh there's my major scale all the stuff we just talked about is now up here uh for FP but the real power in this so this is just sort of like lifting the lid on the magic of of the cage system the real power comes when let's go back to E when you can start going through the chord Chang just let's think of like a one 145 like a e a and b for example I'm playing e right out of this shape the song goes to the a which is a four chord and I go like this [Music] and I went back to an E do you see how quickly I went to an a I just pivoted into this that's my a chord using the E shape so that's another shape we're not getting into that shape in this lesson but but when I'm in this shape I can do all the stuff the same stuff we just did I can do that in in this shape as well I can do it in all five of the shapes so if your mind is isn't blown yet it should be because now you realize I can do anything anywhere once you can understand this and it isn't as as overwhelming as you think because we basically just went through pretty much everything in terms of like the main Essentials and you know there's always other scales and other things you can get into and get more advanced but those are the main things and once you get a good grasp of being able to quickly pivot from [Music] one [Music] so right there was going from an e to an a using the E shape and then up to back to the e but using the a shape you know don't don't let that get confusing this starts to make more sense as you as you sort of uncover it but that's the key to the whole thing is being able to do that and do it fluidly okay now I'm going to play uh a little Jam track which is just me struming the E chord I got a little keyboard and bass and drum a very simple little Jam track and I'm gonna play through everything that we talked about each of those three umbrellas we're going to start with major then we're going to go to dominant 7 stuff and then minor stuff and uh I'm just going to play I've actually already recorded that I just improvise little thing I'm going to now play that and then talk over it and explain what's going on okay we're going to start off with the major scale this is the major 7even chord that's major pentatonic back to Major [Music] scale now dominant seven here that's Mixel [Music] liian ooh chromatic walk up mix Lian I'll explain that in a minute [Music] okay now we're on to minor that's the natural minor scale minor pentatonic scale back to Natural [Music] Minor okay so one of the things I played in that was this chromatic walkup and that's a really fun thing to play when you're in this C- shape this happens a lot in blueg Grass you'll hear blue grass players doing this but I hear it in blues I hear it in other things as well you can incorporate this into anything but if you look at this shape you know it's between the fourth fret when we're playing an e it's between the fourth fret and the seventh fret and so uh if we were looking at our major pentatonic scale for example we have fourth fret seventh fret fourth fret seventh fret right strings six and five I can fill in the notes in between those chromatically like [Music] this and you can get a lot of mileage out of that I mean that's one of those things you've heard me do that probably in other songs and you can keep going to go up between the fourth fret and the sixth fret on the the fourth string so you can walk up to the third interval of the chord so you can go like this it's really cool so anyway I did that and and realized I hadn't explained that so I wanted to just sort of tag this little piece on on uh and uh conclude this video with that I hope you've enjoyed this and please leave a comment and let me know like you know if you've had any breakthroughs let me also know this is a a really important thing if you'd like to see the other shapes covered I could do the other four and we could do deep Dives on all of them and make this like a little series I'd be totally happy to do that and would would love to do it actually uh but I don't want to bore you I mean not maybe not everybody wants this I know some of you are more interested in the song and that kind of thing so let me know in the comments either way like if you like that if you if you're kind of like okay I've seen enough I got it from this uh I'd appreciate that uh but anyway that's what we have this week a lot of stuff there's a lot to sort of digest in this don't get overwhelmed by it just try and and walk away with a few ideas I always say that in every video but that's true that's really how you learn all right we'll see you next week for something new

Channel: Active Melody

Views: 60,768

Keywords: the caged system, caged system, caged system guitar, the c shape, c shape caged, deep dive caged system, improvise lead guitar, improvise guitar, guitar lesson, guitar instruction, activemelody, active melody, activemelody.com, brian sherrill, guitar education, music education, major chord, major 7 chord, major pentatonic scale, minor pentatonic scale, minor chord, natural minor scale, dominant 7 chord, mixolydian scale, mixolydian mode

Id: keWpmbDs8Ag

Length: 23min 5sec (1385 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 17 2024