Uncaged Guitar Lessons

02/09/2026

Turn any triad into a 7th 🎸

The 5th is the note you can most afford to lose. It adds power but very little colour, which makes it the perfect note to trade.

Take C major on the top three strings and move the 5th up three frets. The G becomes a Bb — the flat 7th — and you're holding C7.

Root, 3rd and b7. That's the sound underneath almost every blues you've heard.

Try it free: https://uncaged-guitar.com

31/08/2026

Here's the shift that makes theory click: stop thinking in note names and start thinking in numbers.

The major scale is always 1 2 3 4 5 6 7. In C those are C D E F G A B. In G they're G A B C D E F #. Different letters, identical relationships.

Once you think in intervals, everything transfers. A shape you learn in one key works in all twelve, because the pattern never changes — only the starting point does.

Switch the fretboard to interval labels. 🎸 Free at uncaged-guitar.com

30/08/2026

Chords look like something you memorise. They're not — they're built, and the move is almost stupidly simple.

Take a scale. Start on a note and skip every other one.

C — skip D — E — skip F — G. That's C, E, G: a C major chord.

Now do the exact same move from the second note. D — skip E — F — skip G — A. That's D, F, A: a D minor chord. You didn't decide to make it minor. It came out minor because of where the half steps fall in the scale.

Do it from all seven degrees and the entire harmonic

29/08/2026

The five pentatonic boxes aren't five different things. They're five windows onto one scale that runs the length of the neck.

The boxes were invented to make it learnable, and they do that job well. The problem is that most players stop there and end up trapped in one shape, sliding to another when they run out of room.

Look at the whole neck at once and the divisions disappear. It's five notes, repeating.

See the whole canvas, not the boxes. 🎸 Free at uncaged-guitar.com

27/08/2026

If you only learn one arpeggio for blues, make it the dominant 7.

Four notes: root, major 3rd, 5th, flat 7th. In A that's A, C #, E and G. Those are exactly the notes of the A7 chord, so playing them over an A7 will always sound right.

The real payoff is the major 3rd. The minor pentatonic doesn't have it, which is why solos built only on the blues box can start to sound the same. Land on the C # and the whole thing lifts.

See the arpeggio against the box. 🎸 Free at uncaged-guitar.com

26/08/2026

26/08/2026

There is exactly one thing to know about the major scale, and it's seven letters long:

Whole, whole, half — whole, whole, whole, half.

A whole step is two frets. A half step is one. Start on any note, follow that pattern, and you've built that note's major scale. That's the entire mechanism. Nothing to memorise per key.

Start on C and something convenient happens: you land only on natural notes — all white keys, no sharps, no flats. That's not because C is special. It's because C is where the

25/08/2026

A m7b5 is a diminished triad with a flat 7th added on top. Root, flat 3rd, flat 5th, flat 7th.

It's called half-diminished because a fully diminished 7th chord flattens that last note one step further. This one keeps it natural, which softens the sound considerably.

You'll meet it as the ii chord in a minor key — the first chord of a minor ii-V-i. Learn it there and it stops being abstract.

See how it's built, note by note. 🎸 Free at uncaged-guitar.com

23/08/2026

An augmented triad is a major chord with the 5th raised.

What makes it strange is that it's perfectly symmetrical — every note sits four frets from the next. C to E, E to G #, G # back to C. Because of that, the same shape repeats every four frets and any of its notes can act as the root.

It sounds unstable on purpose, which makes it a great way to push a progression somewhere new.

See the shape repeat up the neck. 🎸 Free at uncaged-guitar.com

22/08/2026

Same fret. Same sound. Two names. So why do both exist?

Because a key has to use each letter exactly once. That single rule decides every spelling in music.

The key of G is G A B C D E and one more note. Spell it F # and every letter appears once — A through G, no repeats. Spell it Gb instead and the key suddenly has two G's and no F at all.

It sounds identical and it's still wrong. You couldn't write it on a stave: both G's would sit on the same line and the F line would be empty.

So the sou