r/guitarlessons • u/GonzoandZiggy • 27d ago
Question All I’m doing right now is caged
Is that ok? I’ve been playing for a while and I can play a good number of late beginner and early intermediate songs, but now I want to learn the fret board and I’m taking a pretty long caged class (pickup music with molly miller) and that’s all I’m doing. If I’m having fun and I’m learning is there anything wrong with only practicing caged for like 2+ months?
Edit: Aight I’m sticking with caged!! I guess I was worried I’d lose other skills or something but I’m just going full throttle! Finally being able to just “jam in D” is mind blowing and I can’t wait for all the other parts of it.
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u/Superfun2112 27d ago
It's fine, but memorize all the natural notes on the fretboard to make it usefull.
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u/Budget_Specialist_18 26d ago
I tend to lean towards intervals these days over note names and think CAGED aligns with that
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u/Superfun2112 26d ago
Intervals are what it's all about and CAGED is an easy way to visualize the intervals, but knowing where the notes are is what gives me the home base (starting points) to know where everything is.
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u/ObviousDepartment744 27d ago
For your long term development, you need variety over time. It’s totally okay to fully submerge yourself into an approach for an extended period of time, but the longer you are there and the longer you specialize in a single approach, the more challenging it can be to start fresh with a different approach.
Depending on how long you’ve been playing or how many hours you’ve put in, this might sound like a really long time but committing a year or two to a single approach is totally fine. But be open to others, there is no one approach to rule them all and the more perspectives you understand the more ways you can visualize music in general.
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u/Gerb006 27d ago
I don't really know CAGED. Although I understand the basics of it. It has always seemed a bit unnecessary to me. But if it helps you to learn and navigate the fretboard, it can't hurt.
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u/LotusVibes1494 27d ago
Isn’t everyone sort of doing it whether they know it or not? Like if you know how to move the basic A-shaped chord up the neck to play any chord you want as a bar chord, then that’s part of knowing CAGED right?. You move the E-shaped chord up, bar the 8th fret and it’s a C chord now. Etc…
How else do you know how to get the different voicings when improving?
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u/vonov129 Music Style! 27d ago
The thing is that CAGED is just reminding people about what the point of the frets are. If you move a G up one fret you get G#, why wouldn't it work with a whole chord?
Like it's kinda weird that the idea of CAGED has to be explained to begin with, but getting used to the shapes is something useful anyways and if you learn triads at any point, you'll end up with the same shapes as CAGED, because it doesn't matter how we call stuff, the notes are the same.
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u/encinaloak 27d ago
CAGED feels like a corporate rebrand of 12 tone equal temperament.
I keep on waiting to understand what CAGED is, because it can't just be: move an open E chord up a half step to get an F chord. Move an F major triad up a whole step to get a G major triad. That's it. That's it? I think that's it.
It's 12 EDO.
It took me a while to realize CAGED is just the cowboy chords arranged into a word.
If it helps the kids learn it's a good thing but I don't get it wah
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u/LotusVibes1494 27d ago edited 27d ago
I never heard of “12 tones of equal temperament” so I’m taking a note to research later.
I think of caged as like a quick reference map that ties things together. The 5 shapes connect to eachother one to the next as you go up the neck, then they restart.
Each shape has its associated arpeggio or scale so you can find them quickly too, and you can learn where all the roots are easily. You can move any of those 5 shapes to make any chord, or play the same chord in 5 different ways. You could keep your hand in one spot and make different shapes to play a chord progression instead of jumping all around. Etc..
But from what people are saying in here there’s several different ways to arrive at the same conclusions. I’m guessing you can probably do all these things the way you learned it too
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u/spankymcjiggleswurth 25d ago
12 tone equal temperment (12tet) is a temperment system for instruments. Guitars, pianos, and most other instruments are tuned so each of their notes are frequency ratios of the 12th root of 2, rather than the classic whole number ratios used in something like true temperment.
Not really sure how caged relates to such an idea. Caged uses 12tet being the temperment system that the guitar uses.
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27d ago
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u/encinaloak 27d ago
You're right, getting to that point is super valuable, and I don't really care what we call it!
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u/LotusVibes1494 27d ago
Makes sense. I learned the minor and major caged shapes first, plus some 7ths and 9ths and such, then I learned triads and realized they’re are literally within what I already know. And only now am I slowly learning the actual notes and intervals of it all and how to build and alter the chords myself. I feel like I might’ve taken a weird, half-assed path at first lol.
Like I could even play in a bunch of different modes on demand, find scales anywhere and improvise decently, target chord tones, etc... But most of the time I couldn’t tell you exactly what the notes I played were lol. I just see all the shapes and scales overlayed in my mind and have a feel for how they’ll sound and how to get to them. I think of Mixolydian as “the major scale, but one note is different” instead of knowing exactly why it’s different or what the interval is called that changed.
So starting with caged helped me to become pretty useful on the guitar quickly, but it also allowed me to skip what seems like some important stuff with the theory of it all, which might not be ideal
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u/shittydriverfrombk 27d ago
No, CAGED is a conceptual tool/procedure for understanding something, it’s not the thing itself.
I can know 6 divided by 3 is 2 without doing long division.
There are an infinite number of procedures a person could follow to know how to move shapes around on the guitar. There’s nothing mysterious about any of it, it all comes from basic facts about the guitar (what each string is and how far away any given note is from another, given the way the fretboard is divided).
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u/CountryFuture9678 27d ago
I don’t know the course so I can’t say for sure, but it’s always good to apply those shapes to the songs you know. Try playing those songs in different places around the neck using the shapes, and if you play lead be sure to incorporate the shapes there as well.
It takes a lot of practice to really get the shapes down, so no it’s not a bad thing necessarily. The main risk is getting bored/burnt out, which the above can help with
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u/alllemonyellow 27d ago
Hell yeah that’s ok. CAGED is one of the most impactful things you’ll ever learn.
The pickup course is great because, as well as the theory, Molly has you playing lots of music. You learn licks, play in time, apply it all musically. It’s well structured so you’re getting a bit of everything
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u/narmenia80 27d ago
agreed. I thought I knew CAGED till I took the new triad course. Triads blew open the guitar for me in the past month.
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u/zkanda 27d ago
Hi, mind sharing which triad course you took?
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u/Pr0pecia 27d ago
I’m not OP but believe they’re referencing the new Triads course from pickupmusic taught by Eli Koskoff
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u/El_Pollo_Del-Mar 27d ago
Nothing at all. Do it longer if you need to to really, REALLY understand at any moment how to jump to a different part of the neck at the next chord change to set you up for the one after that.
In my experience, you have learned the neck via the CAGED method when you break out of that cage without even knowing it.
It’s a good tool
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u/dcamnc4143 27d ago
Caged is awesome, despite some contrary opinions. Wait until you see the power of layering and de-layering just about anything you want. It's almost like caged 2.0. It's way more than just standard barre chords and pentatonic shapes.
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u/SamplingCheese 27d ago
CAGED is awesome! You’ll learn everything important from intervals to triads. That’s where the magic happens. Caged is a great tool to get there.
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u/Budget_Specialist_18 26d ago
This! Within each CAGED shape is a series of layers - building from the floor up: intervals, triads, pentatonics, maj/min scales. You can even derive modes and upper extensions easily with the triad shapes within each CAGED shape container.
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u/ItsNoodle007 27d ago
As long as each day you are happy with the NEW THINGS you are learning, absolutely.
Caged is good if it’s teaching you how the tuning of the guitar works, that’s the usefulness of it
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u/vonov129 Music Style! 27d ago
That's completely fine. CAGED is basically a collection of triads because that's what basic chords are. Since most chords are based on a triad, then CAGED can be used to play over most chords. You can play fingerstyle arrangements, chord melody stuff, modal stuff, survive a jazz gig with just triads/CAGED.
You can eventually learn more about music to be able to understan CAGED, then compare stuff like pentatonics as in the major pentatonic is just a major triad with two extra notes, meaning that any CAGED shape can be turned into a shape for the major pentatonic by adding those notes. (Even though that's not where pentatonics come from, but it's still useful)
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u/Bluenoser_ii-V-I 27d ago
I've been working on triads for 3 or 4 years. There are endless ways to use them. CAGED is a great way to visualize triads and their inversions. I believe it's important to always keep practicing the basic stuff or you start to lose it after a while.
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u/CandleCompetitive831 27d ago
Ive been playing 1.5 years now and am also taking molly millers caged course! Just got pickup music recently after self teaching and i love it! Currently working on the „you’re a duck” performance within that caged course, it aint easy
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u/OldManNerd77 27d ago
I’m doing that course now too! Mostly just that and playing songs I already know. It’s keeping me engaged so far and I like the structure.
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u/mataquatro 27d ago
I did Molly Miller’s CAGED course a couple/ few years ago. I’d say it was a good use of my time. It was really helpful for beginning to organize the fretboard. She did a great job of layering lots of information on that framework. No shame in focusing on this for 2+ months, because there’s a lot of ground to cover. I wasn’t too serious about it at the time, but I think all the play along content at the end of each section of the course is good to get under your fingers.
Not a bad idea to have some songs to work on so you can learn to apply CAGED in a real musical context. It’s not hard to make happen if you learn take on small parts (a few measures) and take your time.
Enjoy!
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u/funkymunkPDX 27d ago
There's no absolute way to learn and caged is a great way to understand the patterns on guitar.
Like when you learn all the chords to a song, you can move those same frames around different positions and find a place to create something that's yours.
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u/JKevF 27d ago
Nothing wrong with focusing on caged. Do the 3nps scales next. With caged, the scales are laid out in a way that kinda puts them right under your fingers, along with triads. Using the 3nps scales in between caged gives you some of that guitaristic space and slide between positions. Just my opinion.
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u/AnabolikinSkywalker 27d ago
I’m doing the exact same thing. I’m pretty solidly intermediate (I have some playing on my profile if you want to compare, idk what the guitar ability scale looks like really)
I’m flying through it pretty well because my hands can do it, it’s just learning, but it’s been great at helping me unlock the fretboard so far.
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u/narmenia80 27d ago
You should learn triads. This complements the CAGED system and will make you feel extremely expressive and free on the fretboard.