Help with æ

upper-case vowels represent lax vowels, and upper case vowels represent tense vowels.

I'm getting a little confused here.       Could you go over that again? 

CJ

My chart was probably confusing too.

General American: bang [bæN]; bag [bæg]; beg [bEg]; vague [veIg]; bay [beI]
My pronunciation:  bang [beN]; bag [beg]; beg [beg]; vague [veg]; bay [be]

So, although General American has distict vowels for those words, I pronounce all of those words with .  Same for words like 'dragon' [dreg@n].