This happens to be one of the first songs I learnt myself and I have found it to be a good starting place when teaching people to play the guitar from scratch. It contains quite a few possibilities for use, there are many examples of it existing to learn from, and it lends itself well to practise exercises for beginners.
Firstly, make sure you have got your guitar roughly in tuneIt doesn’t have to be exact, but experience will make this easier for you.
Knocking on heavens door was originally written by Bob Dylan and has been covered by many artists (Eric Clapton, Guns n Roses, etc) so quite a few different versions of it exist. The version that is shown here may not fit exactly with any of them, but you can change it to play along with the others.
Here are the chords you’ll need:
I normally use the following layout:
|
G 2 D 4 |
Am 2 3 4 |
|
G 2 D 4 |
C 2 3 4 |
Its as simple as that, you just keep repeating that over and over and you’ve got the song !!!!
To start with try a single downwards strum for each beat, taking it fairly slowly at first, dont worry about speed, as a little practise will get you going alot quicker.
I’m assuming you can work out how the chords fit along with the words (I think I’ll be infringing on the copyright if I print them here). Listen closely to the song and you should be able to hear where the chord changes occur, relative to the words.
Once that has been mastered (or gets boring !) you can insert an upwards strum. To do this we need to change the way we count throughout the beats and bars. Firstly, we will add an upward strum after every second downward strum. We alter the count to:
|
G 2 & D 4 & |
Am 2 & 3 4 & |
|
G 2 & D 4 & |
C 2 & 3 4 & |
Count as you see above (1,2 and,3,4,and), add in the upward strum on the “and”.
Once you’ve got the hang of this, change it to an upstroke after each downstroke (1,and,2,and,3,and,4,and).
|
G & 2 & D & 4 & |
Am & 2 & 3 & 4 & |
|
G & 2 & D & 4 & |
C & 2 & 3 & 4 & |
Notice that in the case above, although the amount of strums being playing has increased, the speed and length of the chord changes are the same. The relevant strums are just made quicker.
Now pick the bass note (biggest string) of each chord before strumming the chord. You should get a pattern that sounds like:
G bass note, G chord downstrum,G chord upstrum, G bass note, G chord downstrum,G chord upstrum, D bass note, etc..
In the next case no strums will be used, we shall just pick the strings. For each beat in a bar, we will pick two notes. Example, for the 4 beats of G in the first bar, pick the first four notes of the G chord from the bass down, twice. Repeat this throughout the sequence. For the Am and C chords pick four sets of the four notes from the bass downward.
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