EDCAG: more logical than CAGED?

Mattharrier · August 2021

yocky said:

Mattharrier said:

Surely in the key of C, it does start on the C shape (open E, 3rd fret, open A, 3rd fret, open D, 2nd fret, open G, 2nd fret, 1st fret B, 3rd fret, open high E, third fret), doesn't it? And C is, I believe, often the first scale that is taught as there are no sharps and flats.

CAGED would be AGEDC, GEDCA, EDCAG or DCAGE depending on the root note of the scale played, as this would move up the fret board, with the last pattern rotating down to the beginning.

Or have I missed a crucial part of the system?

I think the initial complaint was that the C shaped pentatonic box is actually position 3. The E shaped one is position 1 and is normally taught first so why not have EDCAG which starts at box 1 and goes to box 5.

Of course the solution (as always) is to tune to C standard so that the old E shape becomes a C. CAGED makes more sense and everything sounds better (this possibly only makes sense after a requisite amount of C standard bong smoking).

As I understood it, the patterns were named after the shapes of the barre chord shapes contained within them - C pattern has a C chord on A3, D2 and B1, A pattern has an A chord on D, G and B5, G pattern has a G chord on Low E8, A7, B8 and High E8, and so on.

Is that not correct?

Well, it definitely is correct, I've just drawn it all out to double check! But is that not where the pattern names come from?

viz · August 2021

Yup

viz · August 2021

tanihhiavlt said:

viz said:

I’ve never actually learned the guitar (I am really a pianist and.violinist) so I’m sure you’re right, C is the first chord learned, but the C chord is a 1st inversion.

... so arguably the most expressive musical instrument (currently listening to my youngest practising Meditation by Massanet) .. and one of the most widest ranged instruments - written across two staves... naturally used for chordal and melodic lines simulatneously.

... yeah too bad you never officially learned guitar

It's a good point the barre chords are really sort of inversions - do the chord-shapes with wider intervals ( greater than a 4th ) i.e. E, A, D lend themselves to inversions though? C and G are like piano chords laid out in ascending intervals of a third, the others are stacked fifths or there-abouts - can we think of those in terms of inversions?

Awesome - Massanet is lovely. And to be frank, us amateur guitarists would do well to take some actual guitar lessons! Well, me, anyway.

The E shape chord is deffo not possible to invert, unless you include the 2nd inversion that you get when you miss the bottom E string (eg x77655 for an A 2nd inversion) - but I don’t think anyone really does that, do they?

I quite often put the A-shaped chord in 2nd inversion (eg 225252 for a B7 2nd inversion) but it’s quite rare I guess.

For the D shaped chord, the only one I see a lot of is D itself - thumb over (so 200232 for a D 1st inversion)

But yep you’re right, it’s the C chord that is most useful as an inversion. I use the full fat version of it a lot - eg 476454 for an E 1st inversion.

And also the truncated G shape chord, eg x4222x for an A 1st inversion.

stratman3142 · August 2021

Many years before I heard of CAGED, I'd worked out for myself that there were 5 pentatonic shapes that could be related to moveable barre chords, but I named them starting from F. But the F, Eb, Db, Bb Ab system was never going to be a winner. When I discovered CAGED, I thought that it was an elegant way of dealing with the naming system (and why didn't I think of it). So I adapted my method to fit.

I also learned it (kind of) back-to-front as well. Because I didn't start with the CAGED chords, but with the pentatonic shapes, which I see as 5 contiguous interval patterns covering the entire neck. Then I could see the basic major or minor chords (1, 3, 5 or 1 b3, 5) as a subset within the major or minor pentatonic shapes.

I expect different players each have their own take on the CAGED system. I just use it as a means of orientation on the fretboard, in particular referencing intervals to the root note locations.

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EDCAG: more logical than CAGED?

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