Hello, I'm Jim Deeming, instructor for JamPlay.com. Welcome to lesson number eight.
Today we are going to add some more chords and fill out what we call the CAGED system.
C.A.G.E.D. and what that refers to is the five most common first position chords that you're going to deal with
and you may remember that we've talked all along about chord shapes.
Those five chords C.A.G.E.D. cover the five basic shapes on which many, many other things are built.
So that's what we're going to do today.
First I want to review where we've been just in case you've been away for a little while.
We've talked about three chords.
The G chord…
The C chord…
And the D chord…
So review the shapes and remember you don't even have to look at the neck of the guitar.
These shapes should start to get familiar to you.
The G looks like this, the C is a picture like this and the D is a picture like this.
So thinking in terms of shapes from your birds eye view of the neck you should start to get a real good mental picture of what's going on
and learn the names with the pictures.
Also let's review how many strings your right hand is covering for each one of these.
The first one the G chord is a big six string chord… and that works that way. We have a root note, a G note at the bottom of our chord.
The next one the C chord we don't play the sixth string it's only a five string chord at this at this point…
and recall that we have as a root note here a C note for our C chord.
The last one is a D chord and it's only a four string chord with a D on the bottom.
The open fourth string is a D note and that's the D chord.
Remember we also talked about a key for the first time in the last lesson and
that is that basically these three chords are a family that go together, they are related to each other, with a million and one songs with those three chords.
Slightly more than that if you play out of tune because there are a lot of bluegrass songs that you can play out of tune.
Alright what we're going to do now is also talk about a numbering system that we can refer to chords by
so that when you move to different keys you'll be able to figure out where you're at, how to do what we call transposing.
When I talk about the key of G this is what's called the key chord, the number one chord if you will.
The musical alphabet only has seven notes. It starts with A goes through G and then repeats back to A again.
So you have A, B, C, D, E, F, G and then the eighth note would be back at the beginning at A again.
So when we have a G chord we're going to call it number one chord but when you're at the end of the alphabet already with a G chord
you've got to start over again with an A, B, C, D and hopefully you caught what happened there we just went by the other two family members.
G being one, A being two, B, C, D. C and D are the other two characters in the family.
So G being a one chord, C is the four chord and D is the five chord.
A lot of times when we're talking about a key we'll refer to the one, four and five chords.
So when we move to a different key, let's say for example we will go to D. If D became the one chord we'd go D, E, F, G, A.
Well there they are again, there's our family D, E, F, G, D, G and A. Alright so D, G and A are the other chord in the key of D
and that would sound like this. D being the one chord now, this is our four chord, this is our 5 chord.
So one, four and five is a pattern that you're going to see a lot, in a huge percentage of the music that you deal with.
So in order to play the rest of the keys now that we want to talk about we need a couple more chords and let's start with the A chord.
It looks like this, I've done another video on the A chord, question and answer because this one can give you some trouble and that's alright.
Essentially the notes that you're after are fretting the second string second fret, third string second fret and fourth string second fret.
These are all stacked right on top of each other and trust me when I say everyone struggles with this,
it's not because your hand are too small or too big or your guitar isn't right for you this is tricky to do until you get used to it.
So you may do it, a lot of guitars books will teach you: here's one, two and three, some will teach it with two, three and four which is the position I prefer
but regardless what's going on here is within this small amount of space we've got to fit three fingers in the same fret.
Invariably what's going to happen is they are going to end up at an angle as you can see mine are.
Remember in our good fretting policy we always talked about trying to fret up as close to the fret as we possibly can
but this is a case where that's just not very practical.
You are going to have to fudge back a little bit, good that you have a nice strong finger here to press harder and make up for that deficiency.
I encourage you to watch that other video on the A shape and the A shaped bar chords for more troubleshooting
but one little tip here that seems to be helpful for most people.
Start with your pinky and anchor that one first, then go next to the middle finger on the fourth string so you've kind of surrounded this cluster here
and then stick that third one in last.
What you're doing is really kind of squeezing those fingers together, fitting them all in
and then always try to keep your first string the E string down here ringing open and this is a five string chord.
So down here on the bottom, ringing open the fifth string is an A string, that give us a nice A root note for an A chord.
One little variety you may try for fretting this is to use the two and three outside then tuck number one in behind it.
That looks a little strange, it may be the ticket though for to get them all ringing clear and clean.
Personally I use all of those and more because in finger style I'm always looking for ways to fret notes
and little varieties of a chord to pick up melody lines so I actually make use of this version, this one, this one and also a little bar version of it.
There's been some discussion on the forums about the bar chord version, the limitation there is unless you're really double jointed on your first finger
it's very hard to get that first string to ring open underneath that bar.
I pick it up here, another high A and that works.
So that's the A chord and you can as with any chord learn the picture, here's what it looks like on your arm.
That's the picture, your birds eye view, this is what you're after, lands on there, when you think A that's the picture you want to see.
Try to begin working on transitioning into and out of the A from other chords.
D for example would be a good one… Here's a D chord.
Go to the D back from the A… Ooh you caught me ha ha ha.
I cheated on the D. We've learned to fret it this way.
Making transitions easier you might of notice that I went this way instead.
We'll talk more about this is the future but you can do it regardless of how you fret these and that's kind of nice.
Remember when we've talked about other transitions one of the things we look for is minimal movements
and that's a good way to practice it is to figure out when I go to the A chord which finger has to move the shortest distance if at all
and in this case to pick up a D chord this third finger is only sliding forward one fret, that one drops down, these guys drop down one.
So picture or focus in your mind on this third finger on this transition. That third finger is only moving one fret and is on the same string.
That's nice, that's why you saw me do this in this version of the chord I wanted to go there, minimizing movement again.
There's not a right or wrong in here other than the right frets need to get pressed.
So which finger you use you have some discretion there and in fact I encourage you to learn to do it multiple ways.
How about a G to an A. Remember this chord go from G.
Ok so with picking up the A chord now we've got a key of D that we can do. D being our one chord…
The four chord would be D, E, F, G.
So the G is the four chord and after G go to the beginning of the alphabet, A is the five chord.
So here's your key of D…
Remember those are all related and it's that same one, four and five pattern that we talked about in the key of G.
Remember this: one, four, five. Ok, now we're doing the same thing here: one, four, five and back to one again.
Now let's add another one straight away here and then we're going to cover another key.
If you think about the word CAGED that I told you about C. A. G. E. D. The one that we're missing is the E chord.
This is actually one of the easier ones to do.
Let's start by building it with the first finger on the first fret, third string now you're third finger is going to go on the fourth string second fret
and the middle finger, second fret fifth string. There's your chord picture…
Nice, big, six string, strong sounding chord.
Probably makes the most use out of the bottom end of the guitar of all of the open position chords.
You've got two open, ringing strings the full range of the guitar is ringing out and think of it as a Big chord.
Transitioning in and out from say the A chord. Watch this.
These two are already in the shape they need to be in, we just need to drop them both one string, lift the pinky and drop the first finger and we're there.
This is a transition you're going to really want to have down. Very useful, not too hard to do, big open chords.
Ok, so with that new E chord now we can add the key of A.
From big A our four chord what's our one chord? B, C, D and the five chord with be our E chord.
So A, one. D is four and E is the five chord so this key sounds like this…
Now let's check and make sure that you caught what my bass notes are for each of those two chords they are root notes.
The A that we talked about has a root note of an A and then the rest of the chords.
So remember in the last lesson we worked on having a bass note and then a strum, same thing applies here .
Base A and a strum. Base E and a strum.
In this case they both happen to be open strings the fifth and sixth string so the same strum patterns apply. As they have on all of the other chords.
So your right hand job hasn't changed much today.
Alright, what I'd like you to do at this point is take some time and get familiar with these two new shapes.
The E and the A and I want you to review the keys that we talked about.
Remember the word CAGED. C.A.G.E.D.
Those are all of your chords down here and the keys that we now know are the key of D, remember one, four, five.
We know the key of G, one, four, five and now we have the key of A, one, four, five.
Alright, if you get stuck use your five fingered hand, one, four, five, rotate through your musical alphabet A through G
and you should be able to find any chords for those three keys, even if you forget you can count them off and figure it out.
What I prefer that you get to fairly quickly now is pictures and muscle memory and just know when I'm in the key of A…
I need a D and I need an E to finish it off.
I hope those chords start to have a feeling to you.
When I said finish it off that means something to me musically.
This is our root chord, this is home, the key we're in.
Now we're going to go somewhere else, we're taking a little trip we're on the four chord.
Right before we go back home though this chord to me musically says "We're heading back home" and finishing up the musical phrase.
That's a five chord that does that.
This doesn't apply in every song but if you think in traditional one, four, five music that's a pattern that you'll hear a lot, almost there now we're done.
A lot of songs are written off of this pattern, just a build a little bit on the numbered chord idea
and by the way when you see these in musical notation, typically chord numbers are written in roman numerals.
So you would see a roman numeral one and a one V for roman numeral four and then a V for roman numeral five.
That will almost always be in reference to the one, four, five chords in a key.
Also one very common song pattern would be to go: one, four, one, five, one, four, five and then back home.
So it goes like this, one, four, one, five, one, four, five.
If you do that a little bit I bet you'll start to think of songs that fit that pattern.
So to review today what we've covered is the meaning of the one, four and five roman numerals regardless of what key you're in.
We've finished out the CAGED chord patterns C.A.G.E.D. and now we know all of the chords for three different keys.
The key of D, the key of G and the key of A. We'll be back to add some more later.
Take your time now and practice those, in each key, practice your transitions
and practice on fretting those clean without struggling and remember to keep it fun.
Thank You.