CAGED in Open D

I'm a big fan of Open D tuning. In fact it's pretty much all I play in these days. But getting started was a bit of a slog. I spent a lot of time going back to basics, figuring out chord shapes, scale patterns etc and there was a period in the middle where I almost felt like I was starting from scratch with the guitar.

So I'm trying to write out some of the things I've learned along the way in the hope it will help others trying to do the same thing.

Here is the first of these. It's a look at what the equivalent of the CAGED framework would be in Open D.

Short version

Spoiler alert - in my opinion, the open D equivalent of CAGED has just 3 chord shapes. Here they are

However in order to get the most out of these 3 shapes it's useful to understand why there are only 3 and why these 3.

Also every thing applies equally to open E and open C. The chords will just have different names but the 3 shapes are the same.

Background

The CAGED system for guitar is an established way to help players to unlock the fretboard.It is built around 5 basic open major chord shapes - C A G E D, hence the name.

Given the popularity of the CAGED system, for players looking to play in open D it is natural to ask whether there is an equivalent.

One way to answer that question would be to draw out shapes for those same 5 chords in open D. However this is not a particularly helpful answer because the question is not really about what the chords are but whether there is an equivalent framework available and to answer that, we first need to understand a little more about why CAGED works like it does.

Formation of the CAGED system

Perhaps the easiest way to visualise the basis of the CAGED system is to pick a major chord and mark on the fretboard all of the chord tones from that chord. It works for any chord but C major works out particularly well. Therefore we will mark on the fretboard all of the places we can play a C E or G. Since C is the root we mark this as R, E is the major 3rd so we mark this as 3 and finally G is the perfect 5th so we mark this as 5. Once we pass 12th fret the pattern will repeat but we have added in a few extra frets worth as this will be handy for viewing all 5 chords on the same chart.

Let’s note a few things:

• Between the open string and 11th fret, we get one instance of each chord tone. In one sense this is obvious since it is an octave however in practice it can be easy to overlook. Realising there is just a single place for a given note within the first 12 frets can help make the number of choices feel less overwhelming.
• Between the open string and 11th fret, there are 5 distinct frets which have a root note on at least one string - 1st, 3rd, 5th, 8th and 10th
• We have a root note every 2 or 3 frets (and similarly for each of the other chord tones)
• There is a chord tone on every fret except 4th, 6th and 11th. This means there are 9 frets where you can play a chord tone on at least one string (including the open string)

Now let’s take each pair of root notes and move them back down the fretboard until the lowest root note is an open string. We can see that these in turn form our 5 CAGED shapes. The slight exception is the first shape C where the lowest note is the 5th not the root note as there is no chord tone on the 3rd string between the 2 root notes.

Below is the same diagram as before with each of these chords mapped out.

This illustrates both the formation of the CAGED chord shapes and why they are useful in understanding and navigating the fretboard. Each shape is 3 or 4 frets wide meaning they can be covered with 1 finger per fret and between them neatly cover the whole fingerboard.

Caged in Open D

Let us repeat the same exercise in Open D tuning. Let us repeat the same exercise in Open D tuning. In this example we will map out the chord tones for a D major chord since that is the obvious starting point in Open D.

Compared to E standard, we can notice a number of differences and similarities:

• Between the open string and 11th fret, we get one instance of each chord tone. This is the same as E standard as it is a consequence of this being an octave.
• Between the open string and 11th fret, there are 3 distinct frets where we have a root note on at least one string - Open, 5th and 8th fret. This is a consequence of the tuning which contains 3 distinct notes as opposed to the 5 distinct notes of standard tuning.
• The number of frets between root notes ranges from 3 to 5. This means it is not always possible to comfortably reach from one root note to the next.
• There are 5 frets without chord tones as opposed to 3 in standard tuning. These are 1st, 2nd, 6th, 10th and 11th. This means there are 7 frets with a chord tone on at least one string. In addition, there are 2 pairs of frets without a single chord tone - 1st / 2nd and 10th / 11th.

What does this tell us in terms of our new framework?

• We are expecting 3 chords not 5. This is because there are 3 distinct frets where we can play a root note, not 5. So if we are looking for chord shapes that go from one root to the next, like in CAGED, there will be only 3.
• We are probably not going to cover the entire fretboard as neatly as we do with CAGED. This is partly because we only have 3 chords. If they were evenly distributed across the fretboard, each shape would need to cover 4-5 frets (allowing for overlap). This would already be a stretch for most fingers, however we also know that one of the shapes will be all strings open. This means that it would not be feasible to have playable shapes that cover the remaining frets.
• Let’s now map chords onto those shapes. As with CAGED we can group the shapes from root to root. However the problem with this is that in some cases the distance between them is so great that it is not comfortable to reach. It would also leave some notes in limbo. For example the major 3rds on the 9th fret would not appear in any chord shape as they are not between the root notes at 5th fret and 8th fret and would be covered by other notes if we considered the shape between the root notes at 8th and 12th fret.

Therefore I have taken some small liberties and grouped them into the following 3 shapes.

These 3 chord shapes provide a similar framework to CAGED in open D in that they can help us understand and navigate the fretboard in Open D.

As with CAGED it is important to note that it is not necessary to play the entirety of the chord shape. In fact it would not even be possible to play the entire B shape anywhere apart from the open position and even then it would require the use of the thumb.

One other point of consideration was the choice of the A chord to represent the shape highlighted in red. This does make the shape very wide - 5 frets - and the 2nd and 5th strings both contain 2 possible notes - the root at 5th fret and the major 3rd at 9th fret. An alternative representation would have been to not include the root notes at 5th fret. This would have meant that when we move the shape down so that the lowest notes were open, we would get a G chord rather than an A chord. However the lowest root note would be on the 3rd string and whilst it is a G major chord, in my opinion it doesn’t sound like an open major chord in the same way that the A major chord with the root on the 5th string does. It sounds more like a Dsus chord, which is how it is often used. This is of course completely subjective so I would suggest thinking of it in whichever way works best for you.

Finally, in the same way that with chords in standard tuning our “normal” representation doesn’t always include all 6 strings, here are the open chords for these 3 shapes as I would usually play them including the names of each played note.

Once you've got these down, the next step is to start breaking them up into triads which allow you to start easily moving chord shapes around the fretboard.