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Very early in my guitar journey I met a picker at a campsite and he said a sentence that landed perfectly in my mind. It taught me CAGED before there was such a thing. He said, “Richard, you don’t learn chords one at a time, you learn them twelve at a time.” He then played an open position chord, I believe an E. Next, he slowly went up a fret at time, calling “F, F sharp, G, A flat, A…” all the way up to twelve. He told me to do this every day for 10-15 minutes with different chords. Once I sorta mastered barre skills, I would take each chord I knew in the Cowboy Chord Zone and walk it up the neck each day. When CAGED came along, I felt I was 80% of the way there. Sure, you’re not playing all six strings much, and four-string fingerings let your pinky come out to play some fill notes, but when someone asks me to play a G, I can ask them “where?” Little did I know words like inversions, arpeggios, chord melodies. I just played up the neck where I knew the next spot was. I could make my fingers look like the chord pictures in my Beatles music books everywhere. That opened up simple chord melodies for me. That’s where I am almost all the time. My lead playing still sounds like someone forgot to feed the cat, but if I can find the chords and work from there, it’s much easier for me to find the tune.
(Let me also say that Brian is a guru in the best sense of the word. A teacher who came along when the Universe was ready to show him to me. Light bulb moments galore, and a style that makes me feel like he’s at a jam with me showing me tricks between tunes. Where he’s really helping is in putting grace/travel notes into chords. Premium membership has been worth it to me. I’ve tried a zillion other courses, probably like the rest of you.)
Richard “Chordpounder” in SoCal
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