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Chord Theory: An Introduction

 
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Description

An important practical result of how the guitar works is that you can slide shapes up and down the fretboard while keeping the internal intervals or shape consistent and the result is you can use the same shapes over and again for all 12 possible musical alphabet letters.

So, we can take a C major chord and move the entire shape up 1 fret and we get a C# major chord because the note C# is one fret higher than the note C. We can go all the way up the chromatic scale doing this and play all 12 possible major chords with one shape. This works will all the common open major chord shapes.

This is the basis of the E-shaped and A-shaped barre chords you learn as an advanced beginning. This is also the basis of the CAGED system, or way of visualizing chord shapes on the guitar.

CAGED For Rhythm Guitar

CAGED For Lead Guitar

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Chord Theory: An Introduction