DITCH the CAGED System!

A long, long time ago, my guitar teacher shared with me a simple concept that propelled me on my path to total fretboard enlightenment, and in today's episode I'm sharing it with you. Hey kids, he's a good friend, Uncle Ben, as many of you know. I've been teaching guitar lessons for a long time and probably the most common problem I see musicians of all levels face is learning and understanding the guitar fretboard, but early in my playing days, when I was just a young learner from shred eye knight my guitar teacher the great benjamin franklin is not that benjamin franklin a different benjamin franklin shared with me a really simple concept that opened my eyes to how easy it is to navigate the guitar fretboard it's a simple concept that You can get it down in about two seconds, but then you spend weeks or even years learning how to get the most out of it and once you do you'll be able to play any chord progression or any scale in any key in any position you're in.

Being on the neck at that time really changed the way I play guitar and I'm sure it will work wonders for you too as there are always downloadable charts and tabs as well as a bunch of extra lesson backing tracks and more . available to everyone who supports my channel on my patreon page patreon.com ben eller guitars, but let's say you want access to that awesome bonus lesson, as well as the tabs, charts, and so on, but maybe you don't have a patreon account or anything. Like that setup, I covered you for about the last year.

My good friend Brandon Suttles has been fighting an extremely rare form of blood cancer to help pay his ever-increasing medical bills. His family and friends created a very special organization. gofundme campaign which i have included a link for in the video description below and i will give you access to the tabs and charts as well as the bonus lesson if you donate anything to brandon's gofundme page you don't. No matter how big or small your donation is, take a screenshot with proof of your donation to the brands campaign and then email it to me at beneller guitars gmail.com, just make sure to put gofundme or something in the line matter that way.

I'll find you in my inbox after I receive your screenshot. I'll email you the link to the bonus video and all the other benefits, so support my channel on Patreon or support my friend Brandon in his fight against cancer and start reaping the benefits today. Thank you. I'm getting these heavenly tones today using my sur alt t running the fractal audio ax fx3. I've also always found that I can improve my tones in the studio and on stage by taking a dod grunge pedal and not using it so I can Sum up this trick for changing the fretboard in four words, every note is everywhere and this is what I mean With that, it doesn't matter what position you are in within a span of four fingers or four frets, which is always comfortable no matter where you are. have all 12 notes available to you at all times, which means that if you take your arm here and just hit it in any random position and think of a note, it will be there somewhere to follow this lesson more easily here. guys, get a fretboard diagram that has all the notes on all the strings or use the one I provided in the Patreon download.

Let's start slowly talking about individual notes, let's pick a random note like let's say a and then. Let's choose a random range of four frets on the guitar. I landed here in second position, so let's start there now, within this little range of six strings and four frets, I can actually find a lot of different A notes, most of you probably found this one. first on the low E string, you also know you can find that on the high E string, but I can also find a note here on the G string for number two, let's say this time I land in sixth position, so I'm using the new number six, seven, eight, nine, there aren't many A's there, but there is one here on the fourth string of the guitar.

Let's say my hand was in ninth position. I can find an a note here on the fifth string. I can find one right here on the second string again, no matter where you are on the neck, somewhere within a fourth fret you can find the note you're looking for, I think it's a great mindset to adopt because as guitarists we tend to become very zonal with the guitar fretboard, where we think you know that a minor pentatonic only exists here at the number five fret, where a G chord only exists at the number three fret, when in reality the notes to make. all those things are everywhere all over the neck, you just have to learn to play the ball where it is, so after my guitar teacher showed me that idea and it blew my mind, I started trying to expand that to e.g. , find chords in any position we take. a really common chord like G major a G major chord is simply the combination of the notes in its triad which are G b and D we can take those notes and put them in any order we want, it could be D G B G whatever, always and when those three notes are still a G major chord when we think of a G chord, most players tend to think of third position, so let's move away from that and put ourselves here in position five to access the notes on the frets five six seven. and eight, okay, so the first note we need is a G, so let's find that one right here on the fourth string, there's a G note, the next note in that G triad is b, I have access to a couple of B different in this position, let's go for one. that's on the high E string, so G b the other note in the triad is a D note again.

I have a couple of those too, but I'm going to use the one here on the third string, seventh fret, so I end up with a G voice. major that goes G B D which gives us that kind of Eric Johnson extended triad sound that's really cool, but if I wanted a lower, thicker voicing of that chord, I could also phrase it like this, which is G B and D in the lower strings. of the guitar now, as I said, this is in a different order, g is no longer the base note, true, the note is, but that sum combination of G, B and D will always sound like a G chord.

I always tell people that building a chord is like building. a bowl of cereal, there are three things that go inside that bowl, milk cereal and a spoon, and you can put them in the bowl in that order or change them if you want and be one of those evil bastards who pours the milk first. You put the cereal in and then spoon it either way you end up with a tasty breakfast dish, so it doesn't matter if we're playing gbd or gbd, it's still a G chord. I like the sound of this voice here too with this. one, I found the G note here, the low B note and the D note here on the third string, let's say I was in seventh position, very far from this kind of base of the number three fret and I needed to make a G chord, still I have tons of options for finding those notes.

I could find a gina right here on the second rope. A B note on the first string and the D note here on the third string. It's kind of familiar, you know, kind of a D major shape like that, but. I'm still getting the G, 2nd and D notes, if I'm in 7th position, I also have access to the 10th fret right here where I can find a G note, then a B note here, a D note on my 3rd string and even a high note. root note here on the second string, but this is not limited to just major chords, this also works for minor chords, so let's say I was playing with a minor voice and needed another way to play that maybe for a little bit of arpeggio or just a layering idea so that a minor chord is a ce and again I can find those three notes in any position on the guitar, let's jump here to the seventh position again seven 8 9 10 that's what I have access to I can find a A note here on the fourth string, a C note here on the first string, and then an E note here on the third string.

I get that really cool, nice, clear Eric Johnson sound. I'm also a big fan. of this sound here is a, the C is very low and the note e is right here on the G string, this even works for somewhat obscure chord types like this, diminished b, that chord is a combination of the notes B, D and f, which of course i can find anywhere on the guitar, let's say I was up to here in position 13 on the guitar and I needed to find those notes. You could easily find a B note here on the third string, a D note here and then an F on the first string, if you wanted, you could add a low B note here on the fifth string to give it a little more body.

All this to say that it doesn't matter what chord you're playing or what position you're in. I can find a way to play it no matter where you are, so after I got comfortable with that concept, I started taking simple chord progressions and figuring out different ways to play them in other areas of the neck. Take, for example, probably the most used chord progression. in all guitardum g c d g, so our g chord, as we said, is the notes g b d to c, the chord is made up of the note ce g and our d chord is made up of the notes d f sharp and let's say I want to play them all here in the third position without use none of our familiar cowboy chord shapes, so again I had access to everything in three, four, five and six, my G chord is up first, that's G, second, I'll find those notes like this, here's a G note, here's a B, here's a D and then up. up here's another G note so there's my G major chord now that it's time to go to C I could play it like this again C is a combination of C E and G okay, there's a C note there's an E note there's a G note and just to thicken it up top I can also add a G note here on the fourth string.

I already like this because it shows you how that G note is present in both chords above and at the bottom as well and now it's time to go to our D major D sharp and Look at this, you can find a D note here on your second string , the a note of the chord is here on the first string, so the other note we need is F sharp, which we can find here on the fourth fret of the third string again, I love that kind of inverted sound like that where d it's not the base f sharp it's the right base because then when we go back to g you hear it come in and you get that lead vocal effect. you know, every time you express those chords that way, we all together end with g c d g, let's do the same progression again this time in seventh position.

I'm going to mainly use the high strength guitar here because a lot of musicians get it. Anyway, I'm used to finding all of their bass notes on those lower strings and I want to break that habit and get used to finding notes even on the thin strings, so that we have access to seven, eight, 9 and 10. Let's start with the G chord so again gbd right, let's find it like this here's a G note here's a G note here's a D note right there on the third string again this is our familiar D chord shape again I'm also going to add the B note here on the D string that way I get that nice first inversion sound so now it's time to go to C which is ce my G, well if I take that note right there and move it up to the 10th fret, which is within my range right now, I can find my C note here's my E note my G and then my C again listen to how you got that nice ascending melody at the top when you play those chords like that now it's time to go to our right d chord d f sharp here at the 7th fret i can find the three notes there's d there's f sharp there's a right one and i can also get a high D note there on the 10th fret of the high E string that gives us a nice, bright, clear d sound, so if you play that progression we end up with g c d g and again, when you play it that way, you get that nice melody up there which you don't understand if you only know the familiar voices, when you start thinking this way, you start thinking more like how Keyboardists or pianists play where they don't have to use the full range of their instrument to play chords, like they don't do chord progressions. chords by doing this on your instrument, you can sit in one place and play with all those different ones. inversions and stuff because they know that under their fingers they have the 12 notes at all times, just like we do, and when you start to incorporate this into your own playing, you will start to have all these nice little voices that direct things like a good pianist also, let's do that one more time here in the tenth position of the guitar so that our gbd g chord can meet me like this again.

I have gbd happening right there at the 12th fret. I'll go ahead and get that high d. note up here too because it sounds good when it comes time for my C chord. You might find those notes veryeasily right there. ce.e.g. those are the notes of the C chord. If I wanted to, I guess I could get that 13 up there. the string if I wanted to, but I'll go back to using that extended three note triad and then when it's time to go to d d fa a, those are there under my fingers here d f sharp a d and I can play that progression and make it sound. pretty nice, so think about all the cool things you'll be able to do once you figure out how to play gcd and all those different positions on the neck and how you could put those chords together in really unusual ways to create some cool sounds, you might have something that starts very high on the neck and work your way down through all the different positions you can play those G c chords.

I think one of the best ways you can practice this concept is to take a song that's just a simple repetitive chord progression like this, figure out all the notes that go within those chords, and then just drop into some random position and figure out. How to play that progression, you get the idea, just pick a simple chord progression, pick a position to land on the guitar, and use your note chart right there to help you figure out all the different ways you can find those notes within any interval. four frets. The concept literally changed the way I play guitar and I know it will for you too, so good luck.

Thank you very much again for watching this video. Get access to the backing tracks, bonus lessons, and whatnot by supporting my channel on Patreon or supporting. one of my best friends in this fight against cancer by clicking on brandon's gofundme link in the video description below be sure to like this video, subscribe and hit the bell to get notified every time I upload one new slice of fried gold right here, thanks again for watching. let them play the guitar less click more play