The Pros and Cons of the CAGED System

[fumblefingers]

I first learning the patterns with shifts then learned the Berklee ones with stretching. Stretching was tough at first, but now I prefer them. I got into stretching patterns from sightreading and trying not to look at the neck with stretch I could sub-consciously keep track of my position better. When shifting I found myself looking at neck more to check where I was.

Bottom line whatever system you use don't just learn them as a group of dots on a grid, learn what scale tone each dot is are so you understand/control what you're playing.

my memory is a bit hazy on this but i think that was a major motivator from Leavitt's point of view. i believe that he was more of a studio and pit player (pit orchestra that is) than jazzer. i don't believe i've ever heard a single recording from the man - playing jazz or anything at all for that matter. i have no doubt that he played very nicely however.

for the other extreme, look at Wes and his left hand approach.

[notes99]

I studied with Pat Martino and the first concept he shared was the caged system using his lines. Five zones on the neck as a starting point. If it works for him, it works for me. Everybody else is trying to reinvent the wheel and wasting your time. Pat is the real deal.

[Reg]

There a means to an end... but generally become more because most guitarist don't finish the learning process.

The stretching thing from position playing is generally from bad technique... lousy stretching position.

When you don't finish the learning process... you begin to develop habits from what your able to finger... good or bad.

Different fingerings create different articulations which create different feels... this isn't always the case, when your aware of this and have worked on being able to play somewhat straight with out accents, positions or shapes can be interchangable.

But generally how guitarist use fingerings becomes characteristic of how they play, their sound. At some point your going to need some type of reference for your playing, even when the fretboard becomes one big grid, or one big fingering, you need a mechanical organization to help you use that one big fingering, grid, shape, fretboard, what ever you want to call it.

We're human, not machines, we generally are influenced by things and usually also make mistakes.

[princeplanet]

Stretching? What about Piano or double bass players? I don't see why we have to avoid it. Personally, for the devices I train in, they are unavoidable. Yes there is ligament strain, in the hand, wrist and fingers, but learning to deal with it, and how to avoid it in future is part of the journey for me.

[MarkRhodes]

I studied with Pat Martino and the first concept he shared was the caged system using his lines. Five zones on the neck as a starting point. If it works for him, it works for me. Everybody else is trying to reinvent the wheel and wasting your time. Pat is the real deal.

I had not heard this about Pat. Thanks for pointing that out. And yes, Pat's the real deal alright.

[srlank]

Pat covers those 5 different areas in the first part of his 'Linear Expressions' book, but relates them to minor chords. Jimmy Bruno on the other hand seems to relate to major harmony, and Sheryl Bailey to dominant and the bebop scale (though she doesn't use 5 positions). Kind of cool to have a variety in perspectives, but taking some committed time with each one.

[henryrobinett]

I don't buy the caged system for scales. I don't care if Martino or God herself endorses it. I think it's a bit short sighted. But to each his or her own. Doesn't mean it can't still be effective. Obviously it can. But to base your choices because other notables used it is not very smart.

[srlank]

I don't know that it's so much a matter of who endorses it. For me, as a relative beginner, it gave something clear and simple, which closed up some of the black-holes. I had originally used the Berklee scales, and got lost a lot unless always playing between the 8th and 11th frets. After I started narrowing it to 5, I was able to get around much better. Then started to see that the 12 Berklee fingerings were just extensions off of these basic 5. I happened to learn them from Jimmy Bruno, but then found these fingerings in a Howard Roberts Book and then the Pat Martino book. Later I adapted to using arpeggios and chord shapes to help see things, but I still have 'Caged' 5 fingerings as a reference. I stopped using the rigid fingering I originally had, because it just wasn't appropriate for certain lines, and instead adapted more of playing off each note from each finger. It's kind of an ongoing process as more gets revealed.

[henryrobinett]

Whatever one uses is what one uses. If it's effective then great, its useful. Basic fingering across the fretboard is a fundamental basic to understanding the guitar and the fretboard. Whatever you use that does this for you, great. I use 3 notes per string. There are 7 of them. There are no gaps like in the 5 scales. The three note are very symmetrical and uniform.

I don't do anything with rigidity. Once I learned these things I KNOW them and fly and scoot betwixt and between anyway I want to. They are NOT there for some fascistic guitar fingering party. They're there to provide comprehensive and total knowledge of the fretboard. Once you have that you're on your way.

[henryrobinett]

And once again whether Martino or Metheny or Bruno or Goodrick or Ellis or Kessell or Christian or Wes uses them or not is nothing more than a mere curiosity. For me it's like who give a F?That's such a basic, fundamental step that it becomes a bit of pointless bullshit.

"Well XYZ uses it so it must be great!" Ok. Whatever. We get caught up in these dick games and lose sight of where we're at and what we're doing.

[srlank]

I'm just relaying an experience that was extremely helpful in being able to translate the music I heard in my head onto the guitar. I don't see how I got myself in the middle of some meaningless shit-storm. Oh well....whatehva

[Flyin' Brian]

It's just a method to learn the fingerboard, the intervals of chords and scales and arpeggios. And as Mr. B said it provides reference or landmarks for learning/navigating the fretboard. It is not fingerings, it is not about position playing or staying in one position.

Anyone who has received a high level of fretboard knowledge has the same knowledge whether they got there using CAGED or some other method. Someone at this level has no need to consciously think of CAGED any more, rather the whole fretboard has just become your playground.

This is the truth. It's one of many means to an end.
The whole goal is to know not only what each note is on the fretboard, but also to know what it sounds like relative to the notes you just played.
So we're looking at two areas here...the knowledge and ear trained area that let's you know what you're going to play next and the physical area that helps you to achieve that goal.
Howard Roberts may have published a "system" of fingering, but he also said when questioned about using his thumb to fret a note that it didn't matter if you used your nose....the important thing was to get the right note played at the time it needed to be played. And the means to achieve that is to know where they are and what they sound like.

I see a lot of older players that still haven't learned the whole fretboard, I feel that it should be learned at an early age, it makes playing so much easier.

It drives me to distraction to watch people spend time picking out notes on the neck because they never learned them. And then they play a sequence of notes in such an inefficient way jumping from one position to another making it worse.

[Groyniad]

the question of how guitarists 'think about' or 'see' the neck is significant because there are so many different ways to play exactly the same idea on the guitar.

henryrobinet is being far too dogmatic when he dismisses peoples' interest in how wes, joe or jim actually moved around the neck - how they 'saw' etc. - because the fact that they are such successful players serves as a reason to believe that the way they 'saw' the neck is a good way to see it.

but the whole topic is dangerous - even though it really does matter for us - because we can get SO bogged down in it. that means two things

- we can think about it all much too much and waste our musical energy
- we can half learn competing approaches - not getting any of them really down - and that can undermine the business of finding an efficient way of 'seeing' the neck

----

my hunch is that successful players see the neck in terms of families of musical ideas (not abstract things like chord shapes or arpeggios or scales but actual playable melodic ideas)

i also think that the concern to learn to sight read can lead to an unmusical split between knowledge of fingerings and the musical ideas in your ear

[GuyBoden]

I see a lot of older players that still haven't learned the whole fretboard, I feel that it should be learned at an early age, it makes playing so much easier.

[henryrobinett]

Yes -- we can get bogged down in competing approaches. It doesn't matter how Wes or Hall or ANYONE LOOKS AT THE NECK. It only matter how YOU look at the neck and you improving your ability to see the neck. It's all happy horsehit and wasting time and energy. It's kind of like asking what Abraham Lincoln saw when he looked at the rose garden. Who gives a hoot? What matter is what he did. What did Wes DO on the neck? And maybe how did he finger that passage.

[Flyin' Brian]

Yes -- we can get bogged down in competing approaches. It doesn't matter how Wes or Hall or ANYONE LOOKS AT THE NECK. It only matters how YOU look at the neck and you improving your ability to see the neck. It's all happy horsehit and wasting time and energy. It's kind of like asking what Abraham Lincoln saw when he looked at the rose garden. Who gives a hoot? What matter is what he did. What did Wes DO on the neck? And maybe how did he finger that passage.

This makes so much sense.

If there was a way to project a picture of each of our own mental images of the fretboard onto a screen I'm sure that we would find that they were all different. The point is simply, can you identify what's on the fretboard of your guitar in a way that helps you to make music...especially to improvise. And remember that the image has to have a corresponding group of sounds with it that you can hear in your head. If you can't hear those notes on the neck BEFORE you play them, you're not going to have much chance of being a musical sounding improviser.

[Groyniad]

Can you elaborate on this? Not quite sure what you're saying.
Thanks

thanks for asking

i'm sure there are all sorts of ways in which being good at sight reading can help you in jazz

(i grew up turning pages for organists in a cathedral - astonishing sight reading - three staves - cathedral FULL of people - sight reading banks of semi-quavers perfectly)

i've known lots of very accomplished classical players who don't really 'put themselves into' what they're playing - its almost as if there's a mechanism that is producing the right notes at the right times, and they are somehow un-engaged (i've known some who aren't like this at all too)

in jazz - i think sight reading skill is hugely useful for professional reasons (obviously) - but the real musical work has to go into

- learning to hear groovy things
- learning to play the groovy things you hear

this is just a totally different project than learning how to translate dots on the stave into music.

it may well require you to stick with fingering patterns that would limit you as a sight reader but which facilitate your improvising (because they help you to get at the ideas you like and that will come to constitute your style or sound)

if i'm playing out of a parker-type bag that will make certain ways of getting round the neck work well (both practically and in terms of fluidity of phrasing) - but these fingering patterns would limit me if my aim was to be able to sight read (just about) anything you put in front of me

as an improviser you don't need to know all the ways there are to play something - you just need to know one that allows for musical phrasing - as a sight reader you need to know every geometrical possibility - and i think setting yourself the task of learning every possible way to play everything is kind of an academic trip rather than a musical one.

these are tentative thoughts - not strong views.

[Jehu]

There are no gaps like in the 5 scales.

Hey Henry, I've heard you mention the gaps in the CAGED system a few times. Here are the fingerings I learned, and from everything I've seen I think this is pretty standard:



If you look at the third line, each position links seamlessly with the adjacent positions. Are you seeing gaps I'm not, or maybe you mean something else?

[henryrobinett]

To me there's a gap between what is being called the Mixolydian (shudder) and the Aeolian (shudder). Also between the Ionian and Dorian. I actually HATE those fingerings SO MUCH! LOL. But you know, that's just me.

[fumblefingers]

the Aeolian and especially the Dorian (types G & D) were the awkward ones that I referred to above... but "gaps"? they touch each other fret-wise.

Leavitt has three fingerings that involve either first or fourth finger stretches to smooth out the required shifts for types A, G, D. I simply reserve those for higher positions. Besides - when do you need to pay the so-called Dorian (type D) from lowest note to highest note other than when practicing scales? (which is jazz guitar sacrilege, but that's another story ) In other words, they aren't as bad for one-octave playing.

[henryrobinett]

FIRST of all I can't stand calling those positions or SCALE PATTERNS MODES. They're not MODES. They're scale patterns starting on various degrees of the scale. Similar to modes but not NECESSARILY modes. You wouldn't call any animal with hoofs a Zebra or even a horse, would you? If you had pepperoni on pizza would you call it a pepperoni or would you call it a pizza? It might get confusing. In my house it'd get very confusing. "Hey, do you have any pepperoni?" We have packages of pepperoni and no one would hand you a pizza.

Every mode is in EACH ONE of those scale patterns. It does each pattern and student disservice to identify them as modes. The the student will knee jerk to THAT PATTERN indicated incorrectly by that mode name as the mode rather than thinking of playing the mode wherever is hand happens to be, which is what should happen. Modes are what they are, not scale patterns. Whenever I teach students my scale patterns I spend a lot of time getting them to change their language. "No, this is NOT the LYDIAN pattern!"

[MarkRhodes]

Hey Henry, I've heard you mention the gaps in the CAGED system a few times. Here are the fingerings I learned, and from everything I've seen I think this is pretty standard:

I learned those scale fingerings when young, but the word "CAGED" was not used, and the fingerings weren't related to those chord forms. I learned seven but two (the 'Lydian' and 'Locrian') amounted to overlaps---beyond learning them and running technique exercises through them, I didn't spend much time with them.

It's funny now to hear these fingerings linked to "CAGED" forms. I don't think of them that way. (Nothing wrong with someone thinking of them that way; I just didn't know people did.) Later, I learned three-notes-per-string scale patterns when I wanted to "shred" (-I'm older than that term, but that's want I wanted then.) I rarely use those fingerings anymore, though, and much prefer these.

[henryrobinett]

Shred is an unfortunate relationship to the three note patterns. They're not about shred at all. But because they're symmetrical people at times think of them that way.

EDIT - AND if one thinks of them as SHRED patterns they don't understand them at all.

[fumblefingers]

indeed, they are neither modes or scales. (or is it nor?)

that's because if you play from the lowest to highest note in one of these you will play beyond two octaves. In other words, they're extended scales/modes, unless you stop at the double octave.

many other instruments practice 1-2-3 octave scales and modes from tonic to tonic (or final to final ) - unless they intentionally extend for melodic or harmonic reasons, etc. so we guitarists are peculiar in this regard.

[boatheelmusic]

Jimmy Bruno calls these 5 fingerings "pitch collections" , a pool of available diatonic notes.

Avoiding the scale and mode terms keeps things simple and accessible, IMO.