Minor Scale Harmonic Layers (Connected CAGED Patterns With Intervals)

Charts to help you learn the CAGED system for guitar and approach each of its patterns gradually by adding in more harmonic information.

Visual appearance

5 CAGED patterns are presented as 3 incremental harmonic layers:

• (1) root triad chord tones
• (2) minor pentatonic tones (strictly 2 notes-per-string scale patterns)
• (3) full Minor scale (a mix of 2 and 3 notes-per-string scale patterns)

Each next layer adds extra notes to the previous layer until each CAGED shape has all notes of the Minor scale. The CAGED shapes on this reference are aligned with the notes of the A-Minor scale in particular. So:

• Playing triad only tones will give you notes of the A-Minor chord.
• Playing pentatonic layer will give you notes of the A-Minor pentatonic scale.
• And playing the full scale version will give you notes of the full A-Minor scale.

Squares represent root notes of the scale (tonic). Circles and squares with a darker fill are root triad tones and circles with a lighter fill are the rest notes of the given layer. The numbers inside the circles and squares represent intervals (scale degrees relative to the Major scale).

All diagrams come in 2 flavors: 13 frets and 22 frets. 13-fret version favors the 5 CAGED shapes without repetition while the other one features CAGED shapes across the entire fretboard, repeating all 5 patterns almost twice and thus unlocking all shapes' connection points and not just in the first half of the fretboard.

Unlike in the case with separate diagrams these show you how each of the 5 CAGED shapes connects to the next one like a puzzle while still visualizing the intersection points with the help of overlapping horizontal bars above the fretboard diagrams. Each such bar spans only as many frets as it is required to make up a single CAGED shape.

Practical application

You can think of these layers as notes which:

• (1) make up the chord
• (2) are next to the chord
• (3) are harmonically more distant from the chord (in other words, moving from consonant notes to less consonant notes in relation to the root triad tones)

What this practically means is that this separation lets you target these layers individually and evoke the right effect at the right time when you're soloing. Alternatively, you can simply visually observe and study how notes of each next layer are superimposed on the notes of the previous layer, or vice versa, how notes of the previous layer "fit" into the next layer and how all layers ultimately form the CAGED pattern.