Many guitarists will feel offended if you ask them what a C chord is; it's usually one of the first things they learn. However, if you delve deeper and ask about the specific notes or the intervals that they're playing, you might stump them.

Not knowing this doesn't indicate a lack of skill, it's because the guitar's layout is notoriously unintuitive. In contrast, if you look at a piano, you can identify notes at a glance, thanks to the clear, repetitive, and logical layout of the instrument.

CAGED is a system that enables guitarists to understand chords and shapes on their instrument with the same ease that pianists do on theirs.

Guitarists often don't know what makes a chord major or minor. They learn shapes, recognising that one shape is C major and another is E minor, without understanding the reason behind it. This gap in understanding becomes an obstacle when you want to solo, create melodies, or understand the theory of what you're playing.

While it's common to rely on shapes throughout your playing journey, understanding what these shapes represent will open up a new world of ideas. You should understand the intervals that constitute these shapes and what makes them unique and that's part of what this lesson will teach you.

Open Chords

Let's explore the common open chords on the guitar. These you will know, but this review will serve as a foundation for the rest of the lessons. It makes navigating the guitar neck much easier, so don't skip this!

Why is the guitar tuned the way it is? If you think about it, it can be tuned many ways, so why did we settle for the current standard tuning? The guitar is tuned to allow certain chords to be easily played in their open form, enabling singer-songwriters to accompany themselves. These are the five open major chords, and they spell out the acronym CAGED:

We'll discuss the rules of this system soon, but first, it's important to know that all open chords consist of triads. Triads are chords of three notes and many triads have a root, a third, and a fifth (there are other types of triads, like suspended triads, for example, but let's keep it simple for now).

The simple definition of a triad is that it's a chord of three notes. Guitarists often get confused here because, when playing a chord like G, they're strumming more than three notes across six strings. Here's the catch: you're not actually playing six different notes; you're playing three different notes, some of which are repeated at different octaves.

C Major

Going back to the question at the beginning: What's an open C chord made of? The C major scale is: C, D, E, F, G, A, B and the notes of an C major triad are C, E, and G (1, 3, 5). All major triads take the first, third, and fifth notes of the major scale.

But when an open C major chord is played on the guitar, it actually has two Cs, two Es, and one G. The triad is spread across the neck like this:

So, the intervallic relationship is:
1 - 3 - 5 - 1 - 3
You might have been playing guitar for 20 years, but how often have you thought about this? That means you're playing the 1st note, the 3rd note, and the 5th note of the C major scale. Then we go an octave up and play the 1st and 3rd notes again.

Triad Confusion

So why do we play five notes when a triad is three? This necessitates a little explanation. A triad is not strictly three unique notes; it's three notes that can be repeated.

If you had an orchestra with 30 instruments, and 10 played one note, another 10 played a different note, and the last 10 played a third note, it would still be considered a triad, even though you have 30 notes happening at the same time. As long as it's a root, 3rd and 5th combination.

So what does the C major chord on the guitar look like when mapped to the piano? Again, this might be something you've never considered.

So, a triad is a chord of three different notes, and each note can be repeated. As long as you can boil it down to three different notes, it's a triad. The "major" part of the name refers to the type of chord, and there are many different types of chords: major, minor, diminished, and augmented.

This is determined by the notes that are on top of the root and, more specifically, by the intervals that each of these notes forms with the root. That's what determines the type of chord. More on this later.

So, to recap, what's a major triad? A simple way of seeing it is that the notes of a major triad are the 1st, the 3rd, and the 5th note of a given major scale.

Two chords to rule them all

By learning the CAGED system, you will be able to navigate the fretboard with ease. What does this mean? It means you can, for example, play B flat major in five positions across the fretboard effortlessly.

Not only will you be able to do this feat, but you can also do it with any chord anyone throws at you. Ask yourself if you can really do that just now. Additionally, you can automatically use these positions to play scales and arpeggios.

First, however, there are two chords that serve as the intervallic model that can be repurposed throughout every major and minor shape. These two patterns are repeated throughout the rest of the CAGED system, and this hack will let you see exactly what interval you're playing as we explore the rest of the shapes in the next lesson. The root chords that illustrate this are the G and E chords. You can think of these as the parent chords of the CAGED system.

G major

The G major scale is:
G, A, B, C, D, E, F#.

So, the notes of an G major chord are:
G (1)
B (3)
D (5)

The most important part for now is the intervallic relationship between each note, which is:

1 - 3 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 1

E major

The E major scale is:
E, F#, G#, A, B, C# and D#

So, the notes of an E major chord are:
E (1)
G# (3)
B (5)

Again, the most important part for now is the intervallic relationship between each note, which is::

1 - 5 - 1 - 3 - 5 - 1

While it's important to know the notes you're playing, it's much more important to understand the relationships between them. Therefore, the next quiz will focus on the intervallic relationships between these two primary shapes. Don't worry this isn't throw away information.

You'll use these intervallic relationships to work out every interval in the CAGED system with ease. Once you've passed the test, you'll see how these intervals repeat throughout the guitar neck. So do your best to internalize the intervallic relationship and get ready to quiz!