Hacking the CAGED System: Book 1

The CAGED system gives you five patterns. Two of them are almost unplayable.

That’s where this book starts, by throwing those two out. What’s left is four patterns: the two from CAGED worth keeping, and two borrowed from the three-notes-per-string system that cover the same ground without wrecking your picking hand. That gives you four shapes, one sequence and the whole fretboard.

It’s taught in F major, on purpose. Not C, not A, not E. Guitarists find those keys comfortable for reasons that have nothing to do with music, and a system learned in a comfortable key tends to only work in comfortable keys.

What’s in it:
The four hacked patterns and the sequence that connects them across the neck. How to find any root note anywhere, with one shape and one exception. Every diatonic chord in the key, in every pattern, and the seventh chords and arpeggios that come out of them. The switch from note names to intervals, which is where the fretboard finally opens up. How to land on the right note as each chord goes past. The modes, drawn out of patterns you already know rather than learned as seven new scales. Key signatures as the thing that ties it all together. A 30-day practice plan, and a troubleshooting chapter for when it still sounds like scales.

Revised 2026 edition: six new chapters and a full update throughout.

Who it’s for: guitarists who can already get around the instrument and are tired of knowing shapes without knowing what to do with them. If you’re after licks, tabs or songs to copy, this isn’t the book.

Book One of the Hacking the CAGED System series. Book Two covers extended chords and the melodic minor scale. Diatonic Harmony maps an entire key from a single master pattern.