Guitar: Campfire-Diploma Completion: An Open Learning Guide

As with school, you don't have to get everything 100% right and without mistakes, and you don't have to memorize everything either. It's enough if you can accompany the songs to some extent so that you don't have to pause while singing because you're still looking for the next chord. You can get lost from time to time (but it should be limited), as long as you can always find your way back into the song.

You know that you can simply ignore additions such as 7, sus, bass runs or similar for the time being.

Believe it or not, you can already accompany hundreds of songs with this knowledge. A small selection of over 100 song examples can be found in the appendix.

We have learned that a key usually has 3 major chords. (tonic - subdominant - dominant). The relationship between the tension-building dominant and the resolving tonic is an important element. We are so familiar with it from hundreds of songs that we use this tension even where we don't expect it at first.

For example, we have the final sequence Am D G. Sometimes the Am can puff up into a major chord and pretend to be the dominant of the following D major chord. A D G. For a tiny moment, it sounds as if you are no longer in the key of G major, but in the key of D major. There, D is the tonic and A is the dominant. But this impression is only very brief, because the D major chord immediately resumes its function as the dominant and wants to be resolved to the tonic G major.

You also learn that no rule is so fixed that there are no exceptions to it. However, you need the rules in order to recognize the exceptions.

Imagine the A major chord, which doesn't usually occur in the G major scale, as a visit from close relatives. For example, when grandpa comes to visit, the father becomes the son (of the grandpa) again, and the son becomes the grandson. But the visit is only brief. As soon as he's gone again, the father is the father again and the son is the son.

When the Am becomes an A major, it can lead to the chord D major in the key of G major as an intermediate dominant. This is called a deviation.

Thanks to the short excursion into harmony, where we got to know the secondary dominant, we manage to find songs that contain all the chords we have learned so far. Along the way, we also learn how to change fingerings quickly in the practice examples.

Admittedly, the song "Ein Mann der sich Columbus nannt" or "Hoch auf dem gelben Wagen" is perhaps not quite as cool as "American Pie", but it also contains all the chords of the campfire diploma and you can practise the "quick fingering change" once again. If you can play the song without any problems, then you are definitely ready for the more contemporary pop songs that you will find in many songbooks. The campfire diploma has taught you all the techniques you need to be able to accompany songs you know the chords to on the guitar. Now it's up to you to put this knowledge into practice. So grab a songbook and browse through it for songs that you can already play.

Source and licence

Text adapted from Guitar/Campfire-Diploma Completion by Wikibooks contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0. Paragraphs have been selected and abridged, and formatting adjusted. This adapted text is shared under the same licence. Contributor history.