The Caged System and 100 Licks for Blues Guitar: Complete With 1 hour of Audio Examples: Learnt to Play The Blues Your Way (Play Blues Guitar Book 5)

Darn! I wish I had a book like this 30 years ago when I first started to play guitar and got into the Blues! The content of this book is incredibly comprehensive and is presented in clear, logical & bite-sized lessons. You will learn all the pentatonic CAGED patterns as well as the chords behind them. But what REALLY puts this book over the top is that it provide 4-5 licks that are centered around each pattern! And the blues licks presented are absolutely amazing in their authentic tonalities...wish I had had a teacher long ago who helped me fuse the scales with licks in such a clear and fun way~ Learning the pentatonic patterns has never been easier for me, and the path to being the kind of knowledgable & skilled Blues player just got way clearer for me thanks to this book. Highly recommended!

This is an admirably well thought-out and clearly developed approach to the CAGED system. I've been playing for a long time and basically know the concept, but the blues-based exercises in the book are enjoyable and wonderful for actually getting the fretboard and a good vocabulary of licks under your fingers. The examples/licks are very useful and the backing tracks are very nicely done (as well as being well organized and labelled, which is not always the case in instruction books). This was my first book from Joseph Alexander, but I've downloaded several more based on the strength and accessibility of this one. As with any book, it's only useful if you actually use it... but the great strength of Alexander's whole approach is that he makes it easy and inviting to do so.

As a beginner, I'm looking for very simple step by step "hand holding" if you will through the process of learning. This book is probably a little more oriented toward an Intermediate student. I didn't particularly like the CAGED explanations as they seemed a little too complicated and the explanations were a little hard to follow for the "big picture", but with separate images requiring a lot of page turning and referencing to the text which is a real pain in the Kindle app format. I see he now allows you to buy the PDF format directly, a huge improvement as you can now easily print out just the pages you want to take with you and study. What I DID like was the value for the money, there's an awful lot of information here. Also, this is one of the very FEW books that includes notation instead of TAB, and if you seriously want to be a musician you're going to need to be able to read music notation. The book is full of 'nuggets' and thorough information that will allow you to reference it as you grow. I know more in my head from studying than my hands can follow at this point so it's good to know the book won't be obsolete for me as I progress.

A structured approach to learning the Caged guitar system with: 1-Understandable and easy to learn chord shapes and their associated diagrams 2-Comprehend movement of chords based on their shapes across the guitar neck 2-Soloing against chord changes 3- Audio tracks containing blues licks 4-provided backing tracks

Caged System book is very well written by Joseph. Foundational principles to understand the concept of the caged system and how it works. I purchased the book with a bit of regular usage if the caged system in my playing. This is a great reference manual to dig into and to keep going back for inspiration. With me already having caged system experience, you might wonder what I found most valuable, 'in the details' of the book. I found Jodeph's recommend licks for the Major, and Minor, as expected. But what really took me to the depth of his training was his examples with the Mixolydian cage licks, especially ehen he combined the Mixolydian with the Blues scale. That was a total eye/ear opener that is rarely taught, mixing the two together !!!! Opened my thought process up, which is the ideal hope in trying a new training process. Thank you. I highly recommend.

I am extremely satisfied with my purchase. The CAGED system is explained in an easy to understand format. I plan on purchasing other books in the Fundamental Changes series,

I might not be the target audience as I bought this book purely for the licks as I already have a good music theory background and find the CAGED system to be unnecessarily complicated. I purchased with the intention of learning some useful licks that would help with improvisation skills. Plenty are tricky and certainly will help people learn scale applications, but don't expect to have a bunch of cool new licks to add to your improv when you are done as most are more about techniques than sounding good.

I bought this eBook because I wanted something that would help me to learn lead guitar, the blues and the fretboard. This book is great for all three. I think Joseph Alexander has written a great instruction book, and is a great teacher of guitar. I also appreciate having been able to download the free audio files of examples, licks, and backing tracks from Joseph Alexander's website, which accompany the purchase of the eBook. If so desired, you can also request from Joseph, and receive a free PDF of the book, which allows you to print any portion or the total book. Not only all this, but if you have a question you can email Joseph and ask, and he will respond. This man is dedicated, and quite the teacher in my book! I was so impressed by this gentleman's style of teaching, that I also purchased the eBook, The Practical Guide to Modern Music Theory for Guitarists: With 2.5 hours of Audio and Over 200 Notated Examples (Guitar Technique) I highly recommend this book as well. Well done, Mr. Alexander!

This book is an essential Guitar learning system, a must have to open up your understanding of the guitar fretboard and how all the parts gel together, helping you in becoming a better guitar player.

Serio, bien organizado, muy bien explicado, lleno de ejemplos prácticos y consejos. Permite comprender a la perfección los fundamentos de este sistema y progresar conscientemente hacia el dominio de nuestro instrumento.

Der Kurs passt genau zu einigen Zielen, die ich auf der E-Gitarre habe: Vokabular an Licks erweitern, improvisieren, zwischen Rhythmus und Solo wechseln und auf dem gesamten Griffbrett spielen können. Ich spiele die akustische Wandergitarre sehr viele Jahre, die E-Gitarre ca. 5 Jahre, bin aber darauf noch nicht fit bzw. sicher. In Gegensatz zu vielen Kursen oder Workshops, die nur bestimmte Aspekte abdecken, ist dieser (englischsprachige) Kurs systematisch und ganzheitlich aufgebaut, enthält reichlich Beispiele und Backing-Tracks. Ich habe ihn vor ca. 4 Wochen gekauft, habe viel Spaß daran und denke, dass er mich das ganze Jahr 2013 beschäftigen wird. Nebenbei spiele ich natürlich andere Dinge, aber ich habe meinen "roten Faden" für Fortschritte gefunden. Feedback part 2, this time in English. I've now been working with the book about 8 weeks. The concept is brilliant and is showing results! I've tried other courses and excercises that either show how to play licks or ones explaining how to play scales. This course is the first one, which really ties it together! - I've grasped the five patterns system and have learned 2 pentatonic licks per pattern - Now I'm able to use them against jam tracks in different keys and speeds - Also improvisation is just "happening", so I'm really enjoying myself My previous experience: I'm a 57 year old guy who, has been playing acoustic guitar using open and barred chords for many years. I first thought, that taking up the electric guitar would be easy, but the ways I first tried didn't bring much progress. So, 5 stars for the CAGED system! Feedback part 3, after 4 months. I've now started learning the 5 mixolydian patterns. The 10 (not even close to 100) licks are still paying off. Play them in different tempos, rhythms and starting points and you will have ample material to improvise and jam with. This book together with "The complete technique for modern guitar" covers all skill building for me on the guitar. I've not found better instruction material on the Internet for skill building on the guitar than that by Joseph Alexander. No need to search any more.

CAGED theory isn't as difficult to understand as you think, and this book presents the best explanation and practice ideas that I've been able to find--and I searched. I have a bunch of Fundamental Changes guitar books, and they all present the subject matter very well. it's useful to know, however, that the inside pages of the print books don't look as professionally laid-out as the cover and back cover. The content (text, tabs and notation) is excellent, easy to read and easily followed; it's just that you may have to turn the page at an unexpected spot. This does not affect the instruction, but it helps keep the price low.

Muy buen libro, te ayuda a entender el sistema caged y sobre todo aplicarlo a la pentatonica, los licks son muy buenos para iniciar a aprender el vocabulario de las guitarra y después poder aplicarlos a la improvisación, los único malo es que si no masticas el inglés pues te vas a tardar en hacer la interpretación al español, de ahí en fuera muy buen libro.