PRESENCE - Volume 63
Inspiration For Guitarists
After my last YouTube video, on using Hey Joe as the perfect song to practice the CAGED shapes, I got a flood of comments about triads.
Specifically, the CAGED vs triads debate.
I want to settle this once and for all: there is no debate!
The CAGED system is the guitar-centric way of looking at triads. And a whole lot more.
Here's what I mean. Inside every CAGED shape, you already have your triads. You also have your diads (2-note shapes), your 4-note voicings, your 5-note voicings, even some 6-note shapes. You also have all the possible chord tones to target in your soloing if you want to do that. The CAGED framework contains all of it.
When you learn CAGED, you're not skipping triads. You're learning triads plus everything else, organized in a way that actually makes sense on the guitar neck.
Think about it this way. Would you rather someone tell you "that's a D shape" — or "that's a second-inversion major triad voiced on the G, B, and E strings"? Same chord. One of those descriptions you can immediately visualize on the neck. The other requires a music theory degree just to parse.
CAGED wins because it speaks the guitar's language.
I know this from personal experience. For years I struggled trying to learn triads. I could memorize them in isolation but they never connected into a bigger picture of the neck. I knew shapes but I didn't know the fretboard. Then I discovered the CAGED system and something shifted. I didn't just see the triads — I saw everything. The whole neck opened up.
Learning CAGED was the single thing I practiced that took me from amateur to professional guitarist.
That's not a small claim. I mean it completely.
So if you've been sitting on the fence about which system to pursue — stop. Focus on CAGED. You'll get the triads. You'll get the full neck. And you'll have a framework that keeps paying off for the rest of your playing life.
The CAGED system is one of the three core frameworks my Essential Skills for Guitar Course is built around — and I'd argue it's the one with the highest ceiling. I walk you through all five shapes, how to connect them across the neck, and how to distill them from the clunky, hard-to-use versions most people are taught into the streamlined shapes the pros actually play — then put them to work in real musical situations, practicing along to backing tracks built around real songs. It's the most fun I've ever had teaching this material, and students tell me students tell me they forget they're even practicing.
If that's the missing piece in your playing, this is where to start:
-Dustin
PS — Already in the course and want to work through this stuff with a group? Office Hours is a small community of serious players doing exactly that, with a live coaching call every Friday.