Minor CAGED system chords
Guy playing a solo on guitar

CAGED System Soloing Exercise

If you’ve been a reader of this site for any length of time, you know I’m a huge advocate of the CAGED system. It’s so valuable for learning guitar and it makes navigating the fretboard so much easier. For that reason, I’ve put a lot of time into putting all of the pieces of the CAGED system together. In this lesson, we’re going to go through one of my favorite CAGED system soloing exercises that helps you map the CAGED system to the fretboard in a fun and musical way.

Guy playing a minor barre chord on an acoustic guitar

Movable Chord Shapes on the Guitar

One of the best things about the guitar is its grid-like structure of notes. While it takes time to learn, it’s extremely powerful in providing us with shapes and patterns that can be moved up and down the fretboard to form any chord, triad, scale, or arpeggio of the same quality.

Guy playing chord shapes on acoustic guitar

How to Practice the CAGED System

The CAGED system is invaluable for learning the guitar fretboard. It breaks down the fretboard into memorable shapes and patterns that make it easy to learn. In this lesson we’re going to go through some ways to practice the CAGED system to get these shapes under your fingers and enable you to visualize them across the entire fretboard.