Day 2 - The C Shape

Now that you've had a bird's eye view of the CAGED system as a whole, let's fly down to the ground to look at the C shape. This is where we'll start carefully building your CAGED foundation, shape by shape.

We'll be working on our C shape in the key of D.

The four steps to build-out each shape

We will follow a four-step process to build out each CAGED shape.

Shapes. Fret the shape – get it feeling good under your fingers.
Roots. Find and visualize the root notes. They should feel like home.
Chord tones. Find and visualize the 1, 3, 5 chord tones. They're the backbone of music.
Pentatonic. Add two more notes to get the pentatonic scale. Now you're cooking.

Penta-what?

If you're not already familiar with it, the pentatonic scale is going to be your best friend for lead guitar. It’s relevant in every style of music and a must-master scale in your soloing journey.

This five-note scale contains your chord tones plus two extra notes: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6
These notes will sound great over every in-key chord in a chord progression.

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The C shape feels awkward for everyone at first! It’ll get easier over time.

Don’t get stuck strumming – Aim for visualization and fingering, not a clean strum of the full chord shape.
Play it and say it – Saying - or singing - the note numbers out loud will help you memorize chord tones better.
Keep moving forward – Rome wasn’t built in a day.

Lastly, a reminder that shapes ≠ chords – The root note determines which chord you’re playing, not the name of the shape.

Let’s hit the gym.

Exercise 1. Play it and say it

We'll start by honing in on the D roots and chord tones via the C shape. Reciting or singing the note numbers out loud will really help to lock them into your memory.

Don’t worry too much about sustaining each note or locking your hand to the chord shape. It's fine to keep moving even if it's not perfect.

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Exercise 2. Play and say – full shape

Adding chord tones across all six strings will give you more notes to choose from as you start to solo.

Take this exercise to the next level by singing the notes as you play them. It doesn’t matter if you’re a good singer or not, the point is to train your ear to recognize how each note sounds in relation to the root note. If you study music at university, this is one of the first skills you will learn.

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Exercise 3. Major pentatonic scale

Now that we've hit the 1, 3, and 5 chord tones, we only need two more notes (the 2 and the 6) to buy ourselves the five-note pentatonic scale. Our world is starting to open up.

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Jam

You’ve earned a jam with Sam! Follow along with the prompts to make today’s material musical. Remember - there are no TABS for jams. Think of this as taking your training wheels off.

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Nice work!

Revisit this material until this shape feels familiar under your fingers and in your mind.
The more time you spend getting musical with these jam tracks, the more progress you’ll make as a lead guitarist.

In Day 3, we’ll shift up to the A shape.

Wait a minute! This is only a sample lesson. Want to continue your journey to fretboard freedom?

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