Knocking on Heaven's Door Guitar Lesson for Beginners

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I have a phenomenal song for beginners. I'm going to be showing you how to play Knocking on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan. This song is in standard tuning. If you are going to be trying to play along with the Guns N Roses version, you would have to turn your tune, your guitar down a half step, meaning all of these notes need to be changed, which is why we're doing Dylan's version. We don't have to change anything. So let's talk about the chords we're using. There's going to be four. Four absolute beginner chords, all open chords. We have a G chord, we have a D chord, we have a C chord, and we have an A minor chord. Now, on this version of the song, I'd make a little recommendation here. So if you're using this D, I would try to play the four finger G. Why? Because it creates a nice little pivot point. Okay. Versus, you know, having to move the third finger down and get the other two in place. You can do that. There's no problem with that at all. But I like to mention to people that you can just put your pinky right below, pivot the other two fingers up and you've got a four finger G. And it creates a nice little pivot point. You guys know how I love pivot points when we can create them in songs.

So what I really love about this song is that it is a very repetitive, repetitive chord progression. Our chord progression is just the order we play the chords in. So for this song, we have G for two beats, D for two beats, an A minor for four beats, and then it's G for two beats, D for 2 beats, and then C for a full measure. And then it just keeps repeating that for the entire song. So it's a very, very nice song for beginners because there's not a lot of change going on. So what I'm going to do is show you two different strumming patterns, beginner level, that we can use on the half measures. And then we're going to use a different strumming pattern on the full measures. I'm going to keep this super simple for beginners, but stick around after the play along later because I'll show you how you can do a couple little extra things to spice it up if you're up for the challenge. So we're going to start with our G chord. Okay. And we'll use the right G chord. And what we're going to do is we're going to do down, down Up. That's it.

Down, down, up.

And then we're going to switch into our D chord. Look at that nice little pivot. And it's to be down, down, up. Okay, so once again, back to G. We've got down, down, up. And then we're going to switch into D. Down, down, up. Now, the timing for this is counted. 1, 2, and 3, 4. And 1, 2, and 3,4. And so let's try that with the chords. Ready? So we got 1, 2, and down, down, up.

One more time.

Okay, so that's how we're going to play those split measures of the song. And we have to do that with every line. Okay. What happens is that every line, it either switches from A minor or C. A minor, C. So you have to kind of remember, did you play an A minor or a C on the last time through? So the first time it's going to be A minor. So what we're going to do in the A minor is we're going to do 1, 2, and 3, 4. Just slightly different. Now, the reason I'm removing that last upstrom is for some people, they need that extra split second to get back into the G chord. Okay. So that's why I'm not putting an up strum on the end. So if we play the A minor, it's going to be 1, 2 and 3, 4.

1, 2, and 3.

Same for the C chord.

1, 2, and 3, 4. 1, two, and 3, 4.

I know going between C and G is a very, very tricky chord change for a lot of beginners. So by not adding that up on the end just, again, it just gives you a split second more to get back into that G chord. So if we put these together, all right, it's going to be split measures G and D followed by an A minor, and then split measure G and D followed by C. Let's give that a try. And then we'll do a little bit of a playthrough here. All right, so we're going to do 1, 2, 3, 4.

Back to G. Ready?

1, 2, and 3, 4. And 1, 2, and 3, four. One, two, and three, four. And.

Perfect. All right, so what we're going to do now, we're going to do a little play through verse and chorus, and then I'm going to show you a couple little spices you can add. Once you get a feel for this song, you can start playing around with it and taking it a little bit beyond the beginner level, if you're interested. Not too intermediate. We're just going to Kind of do some late beginner stuff. So let's take it from the verse. We'll do one time through as an intro just to get our bearings. And then I'll start singing. All right, so ready? We got 1, 2, 3, and 4. M.

Ready? Here we go.

Mama, take that badge off me.

Cause I can't use it anymore.

It's getting dark, too dark to see.

Feels like I'm knocking on heaven's door.

Chorus.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door.

Now this is a slow song, which provides a very nice opportunity for picking if you are interested. I'm also going to show you another strumming pattern that I really like to use for this song. But first, let's start off with the picking. And what we're going to do is we're just going to start off by picking four notes on the G, four notes on the D. And then we're going to pick eight notes on the A minor. Let me show you real quick. So for G, we're going to go.

Okay, so what did I do? We're playing the bass note, the sixth string.

And then playing strings 4, 3, 2. So it's 6, 4, 3, 2. And then we're going to do a D chord and we're going to play four, three, two, one. Okay, we're playing four strings per chord. So if we go back to the G chord, 6, 4, 3, 2. And then D chord, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then the A minor chord. I just played 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 3, 2. Just played that twice in a row. And I would do the same for the C chord. 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 3, 2. So if I take it from the top. All right, we got a G chord, 6, 4, 3, 2. A D, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then we have a minor. 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 3, 2. I'm doing all down picks here to keep it simple. Back to the G chord. So 6, 4, 3, 2. And then we get our D chord, 4, 3, 2, 1. And then we have our C chord, 5, 4, 3, 2, 5, 4, 3, two. So if I did this a little bit more up to time, it would sound like this. We got 1, 2, 3, 4.

Mama, take this badge off me.

Cause I can't use it anymore.

That's a nice sound to it, right?

It's getting dark, too dark to see.

It's like I'm knocking on heaven's Door.

And then the cool thing is knock.

Knock, knocking on heaven's door.

You can go right into strumming to the chorus.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door provides.

A nice contrast between the verse and the chorus. We call that dynamics in music and it helps keep things interesting for the listener. All right, so while we're talking about strumming, let's talk about the late beginner strumming pattern you could use. And we're just going to add an extra down into what we were already doing. That's why you start at the beginning. You get feel for that. And then we add things in. That's how I teach. We take it step by step, one piece at a time. All right, so so far we've been.

Doing 1, 2 and 3, 4.

And right, 1, 2 and 3, 4.

And so it's down, down, up, down, down, up.

Now we're going to be going down.

Down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up, down, down, down, up.

So again here we're adding one more down in and it gets a little bit quicker. Okay, so the count on this, it's got a 16th note. That's what that A is on the end. It's going to be one, two and.

A three, four, and a one, two and a three, 4, and a one, two and A three, four, and a one thousand two and a three, four and a.

And with rhythms like this, sometimes you hear me tapping on the guitar. If you can tap it out on your guitar, 1, 2 and a 3, 4, and a 1, 2 and a 3, four. And if you can tap it out on your guitar, it's more likely you're gonna be able to play it on the guitar. So let's take it. Let me go to the second verse. I'll play through the second verse for you so that you can hear it with this drumming pattern. Alright, so we got 1, 2 and a 3, 4 and a. Mama put.

My guns to the ground.

Cause I can't shoot them anymore.

That long dark cloud's coming down.

Feels like I'm knocking on heaven's door.

Knock, knock, knocking on heaven's door Play the record there on.

The scene but that's okay. You can see that you can take this even further if you want to, but I just wanted to give you guys a couple spices that you can do to build upon this song. And if you're looking for more ways to make your strumming interesting, go watch this video over here where I show you how to create seven different kinds of strumming from one strumming pattern. Interesting. Go click on that lesson to learn more.