Good supplement to Caged?

Hi all
After 10+ years of playing I decided that I should begin to study the fretboard seriously. I recently purchased Brad Carlton's Caged Cracked video from truefire.com. In just a week I'm already beginning to see patterns that I had never suspected existed. Up until recently I had been playing by ear and just picking up what I could from friends and others while watching them play. What an eye opener this system is for me.

While learning new patterns and shapes is very useful it still doesn't explain the underlying relationships and theory. So I am looking for suggestions from those of you that have already been through this as to what would be good supplemental material to explain the theory side of things.

I've decided that this year I am going to be spending more money on instructional material than gear...and Gasp...I am already seeing an improvement in my playing.

First off, let me congratulate you for having some very important realizations. Do what you are doing an your skills will go through the roof!

As far as theory, enroll in a theory class at a local community college. You want to learn music theory not guitar player theory. Sitting in a classroom and being away from your guitar forces you to understand music in a different way.

Go get em you should be proud of yourself!

twangjeff I am planning on taking a theory class this fall semester...seems like that advice is right on the money!

Great job! One of the biggest breakthroughs that you can have as a player is when you start trying things on the guitar that you know in theory instead of trying to justify what you can play on the guitar with theory.

For theory I suggest learning some jazz because jazz tutorial books always offer a lot more theory explanation than the average 157 rock riffs in tab format types do.

Now a jazz-blues might play a pair of 4-chord turn-arounds whilst a blues will be doing something like E/// E7///. Once you figure these playing the changes (basically adding the lead/melody run into the chords) and can play such in any key, the wherefore of theory falls into place.

check Guthrie Govan's Creative Guitar 1. It might be able to help you..

Maybe learn some about "Harmonized Scales".

Memorizing how to spell chords (R, 3rd, 5th, and 7th) will help you out a lot (in your theory class and in application). I suggest making flash cards and using them until you can spell the chords in your head faster than you can say them.

I'd assume that learning scale modes would be the next step here. They coincide with CAGED real nicely (unless your CAGED revelation included this).

Well, there's no substitute for a good teacher. What I did once for instructional materials was go to a website of a music school, and pull their curriculum, and then order the textbooks they require of their students. I've since collected some other materials via students pursuing university-level music degrees.

I wouldn't worry about modes too much in the beginning. Most guitar players don't REALLY use modes even if they think they do. They just use modes to create 7 fingerings of any given scale but in the end they are still playing G major over a progression in G even if they are thinking B Phrygian or whatever. 5 fingerings will give you a lifetime of work. Start with the major scale, then learn all the arpeggios inside of it. For instance in any given fingering learn the G major scale then Gmaj7 arp, A min7, Bmin7, etc. Once you have that for all your major scales then go to harmonic minor and then melodic minor, then your diminished and whole tone scales. That will give you almost every tool you will ever need.