How to Play Barre Chords: CAGED System
Approaching Barre Chords
Barre chords (sometimes incorrectly written as "bar" chords) are essential if you want to get to the advanced level of guitar playing. That's because they allow you to re-use any chord pattern in many different places.
The CAGED system is a unique method for visualizing the chords along the guitar neck.
If someone says to "play a C chord," even an advanced player who knows hundreds of C chords is likely to play open C when asked. That's because it's the first "C" chord most players ever learn, so it's easily remembered.
What if you wanted to play a "C" chord following another chord at position VII? Do you want to jump all the way down to the low register, or would you instead continue playing in the same area?
The CAGED system is a method of remembering how to play the same chord in multiple places up and down the neck. While it doesn't much help your understanding of the neck, it is a useful bridge between the open chords and the barre chords. This technique can help you to discover alternative ways of voicing your chords, and can also be helpful in transposing songs.
Let's return to your open "C" chord. The CAGED system is a mnemonic way to remember that the next-highest "C" chord will have the same shape as the open "A" chord. After that, it will appear again with an open G shape, an E shape and finally a D shape before it returns to its original shape.
Let's play them all.
First, we'll play the familiar Open C chord. Then we'll shift the same chord to the next shape, making sure that the root is still "C". In this way, we can play five different C chords.
Warning: A common stumbling block is to be unable to play some of these chords. That's OK! They're not always practical to play. And some of them are most often played in partial form.
Key Tasks
- Play all the CAGED chords in C major, as shown.
- Change the first chord to E major and repeat.
- Try changing all of the chords to minor chords.
