28. Bossa Nova Chords - CAGED System

Over the past five chapters, you've learned how to play Bossa Nova chords rooted on individual strings: E, A, D, G, and B. We started with the heaviest strings and moved to the lightest to help you remember the chord shapes.

Now, it's time to connect these chords and unlock the entire fretboard.

While learning by string weight was helpful for memorization, the shapes themselves follow a different, systematic order on the guitar.

As you move from the tuning pegs towards the guitar's body, you'll discover that the same chord can be played using five distinct shapes. Each of these shapes is rooted on a specific string in a consistent sequence: B, A, G, E, then D. This "BAGED" order is key to navigating the fretboard efficiently.

This approach provides a clear, consistent way to identify and apply chord shapes based on their most prominent root location on each string. The graph below illustrates this arrangement, showing where you root the C major chord on the B, A, G, E, and D strings using these shapes.

• This is what the C major 9th chord looks like rooted on all these 5 strings.

B String Chords

• This is the B string with the C major scale notes labeled.

• Highlight notes 1, 4 and 5 in red because these are the root notes of the major chords.

• These are the 5 chord shapes for Major 9, Major 6, Major 7/#11, Suspended 2, and Suspended 4 chords rooted on the B string.