In my opinion, every guitar player needs to have a working knowledge the CAGED sequence and how it pertains to linking chords and/or scales together. It’s not necessarily about lead guitar. Knowing the CAGED sequence will open up the fretboard and enable you to get past the limits of playing open position and/or barre chords. [Of course, sometimes the best option is to play an open chord, but you shouldn't be limited to those chords.]

This post is going to deal with scale patterns for lead guitar – specifically, we’ll be discussing pentatonic scales. A pentatonic scale consists of 5 different notes. In this exercise, I will arbitrarily choose the key of G major (G A B D E G), and the relative E minor (E G A B D E). Both scales have the same notes; the only difference is where you start and stop.

Let’s jump right in. There are 5 different patterns in the CAGED sequence. The first one is the C shape. In the key of G, this would be in 7th position, meaning your first finger plays on the 7th fret.
 

The next shape is the A shape, and you start out in 10th position. The first note in the pattern should be played by your second finger.

Up next is the G shape, and this one is in 12th position. You could also play this in open position. This is probably the most commonly used pentatonic pattern.

The E shape is next, and you can either play this in 2nd position or in 14th position. Like we saw in the A shape, your second finger should play the first note.

The last shape is D, and it’s kind of a weird one. There are a couple of ways to play this one, but I would start out in 5th position and just stretch my first finger back to the 4th fret on the G string. If you’re feeling adventurous, you can also try this one up in 17th position.

If you’re totally unfamiliar with these patterns, just start with the first one and play it over and over. Try isolating 2 or 3 strings at a time to facilitate memorization. Try playing sequences, such as up 3, down 1, or just make up your own.

I’ll continue this series over the next few weeks, so make sure to subscribe to my feed if you’re interested.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 15th, 2008 at 12:56 pm and is filed under Guitar Lessons, Music, guitar.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.