CAGED

frankus

These discussions kinda remind me of my son's school teaching maths - all that's important is for someone to find a way of doing multiplication and division.. butt he school (bless em) demanded the kids learn every single method and solve problems using specific techniques.

So what was intended to be "can you figure out 217 x 325" turns into "can you figure out 217 x 325 using the grid method" - kids who were perfectly good at maths became doubtful because they could solve the problem easily - just not using the device asked for.

The premise of the numeracy work was to teach a broad spectrum of techniques so that kids found ONE that worked. All they need is one way of doing it.

Just like all we need is one method of memorising the fretboard. That DOES NOT mean there's "one true way" there definitely isn't.

As guitarist I've several chord patterns I enjoy hearing: D barre chords, C moveable chords, E and A barre chords... I've not explored G barre chords (face it 2 frets up are the A barre chords that fall under the fingers faster than staying on the same fret and finding unfamilliar chords...

The final part of my individual and not endorsed view is this - it's all about chords, chords a really good indicator of good notes for a melodic line, the jazz mantra is try it in all keys ... that's the same voicing experimented with in all other contexts - doesn't need to be learned unless you think the sound will be useful. .. in doin that CAGED becomes irrelevant... after all you don't know all 2-30 letter combinations of the alphabet - you know "badger", "mozambique", "cuttle-fish", "wobble" - specific "licks" and when to use them and for all that you don't feel a fraud or that you need to have a profound understanding of phonetics - to help you invent that entirely new sentence.

You know the sentence that goes "xzxyxyx xyyxyx yzxyz zxyzyzx, zxyzyx zyx z yxyzyx!" ah hah! ah hahaha hahaha (laugh with me, it's actually hilarious)..

Find a way that works give it a six months to a year of really trying and if it isn't working out, try something else if you feel like it

If you want to play guitar, you don't need to talk about how you know what you know and you don't need to have an encyclopaedic knowledge - you need enough to play the sounds you want to hear.

viz

harpo said:

Right.... I've read that 16 times and still I'm not Sure I get what your saying .......E string driven???. Wtf does that mean ? 'C bar chord on all the string = first inversion' ok fine but where's the root? Gaaaahhhhhh!

I'm sorry @harpo, I'm really bad at explaining this and it's coming across complicated when it isn't. I just mean chords with the bottom note on the low E string (not necessarily the root). Here's what I mean and apologies for the playing etc.



So that's 3 E chords (root, 1st, 2nd) - the E shape, the C shape and the A shape; and 3 A-chords (root, 1st, 2nd) - the A shape, the G shape, the D shape.

And that's why I think ECA and AGD are more useful and more musically relevant than CAGED. To me it just seems a more music-based construct not a technique-based construct, because the fact that the chords are roots and inversions, at least to me, is more important than just different ways of playing the same chord.

harpo

Ah, thanks Viz, Any chance you could repeat exactly what you did on the vid via tab ( cos it's difficult to see your fingering mate) Ah.......I can see now in the earlier post :-)

viz

Cheers. I'm sure some of the chords I play are not conventionally correct by the way, but they're what I use to reinforce the inversion sounds.