In this Knocking on Heaven’s Door guitar lesson, I’m going to break down the simple chord progression and patterns so you can play one of the greatest songs of all time. Let’s jump in!
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Franco Lacan
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Knocking on Heaven’s Door is a great song for beginners because it only requires four open chords. Most of them you probably know already!
If you want to start using the first few open chords you’ve learned, then this Knocking on Heaven’s Door guitar lesson is perfect for you!
The Chords We’re going to need four different open chords. We'll have to play a G Major, a D Major, an A minor and a C Major.
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A pretty cool trick I tell all of my students: whenever you play G Major and D Major back to back, keep your ring finger (finger number 3) on. This makes the transition much easier since you can “anchor” that finger.
Franco Lacan
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Wondering how to play these chords?
If you want to learn or consolidate your open chords, check out our Acoustic Beginner level 1 Course.
The Structure
The structure of the song is very simple, it looks like this:
We’re going to play G for two beats (half a bar), and D for two beats (the other half of the same bar!) and finish with either A minor for four beats, or C Major for four beats.
Think of it as always playing G and D, then alternating between A minor and C.
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As always, the first thing to do is to spend time with the chord progression, making sure that you’ve got it, and that you feel solid with it.
Franco Lacan
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I highly recommend playing along with the song as soon as your chord transitions feel comfortable. That means playing the song on any platform you use, and trying your best to follow what’s going on! And sure, it might not be perfect at first, but that’s a pretty fun and rewarding way to learn a structure and a “feel” of a new song.
The Strumming
The pattern of that song is where the fun is!
As the chords are so simple, the pattern has to add some dynamics to that progression.
The first thing to understand is that we want to feel the 16th notes. That means our strumming hand will move down when you count the beats, but also when you count the “and” of the beats.
Moving our hand this way will allow us to play some more interesting and richer patterns. If this is new to you, be sure to count along!
Then, the pattern looks something like this:
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Start by applying this pattern to all the chords. It’s a useful strumming pattern that you’ll come across again in the future!
Franco Lacan
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The key thing to understand at this level is that G Major is played in the first half of the pattern and D Major in the second half (starting on beat 3). However, for both A minor and C Major, you’ll strum for the full four beats!
The Dynamics
Now that the core of the song is in place, it’s time to talk about dynamics!
A good way to get started is to strum more on the A minor and C Major, filling the empty space at the end of our progression.
You could do something like this for Am or C major:
On top of that, you could dig into the strings more when reaching this part of the pattern, add some extra volume to it!
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Remember to experiment with it, try to strum more or less, try to play harder or softer, have fun and be creative with your dynamics!
Franco Lacan
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One last little detail before we wrap up! To add even more dynamics to A minor and C major, try adding the "G" note on fret 3 of the high e string when playing these chords. You can do that at the end of the pattern like I did, when we start strumming more.
It’s a little trick that Bob Dylan does on the recording, and it’s a nice way to change the colour of our mighty A minor and C Major at the end of the pattern!
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