Bob Dylan for Easy Guitar
To mark his birthday this month, and celebrate the release of his new album Together Through Life, we've picked Bob Dylan as our featured artist of the month.
The Music of Bob Dylan
What can you write about someone who, essentially, is a whole genre of music? About someone who posted in his high school yearbook that his ambition was to join Little Richard? About someone who’s latest recordings are as influential as the first ones he made close to fifty years ago?
Bob Dylan – Biography
Born in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, Bob Dylan has released over sixty albums and compilations. No other songwriter from modern times has had as much cultural and musical significance. This article takes a look at Bob Dylan’s life and music through the years.
Bob Dylan Guitar Lessons
Singers, songwriters, and guitar players of all levels can learn from many of Bob Dylan’s classic songs. A lot of his early material features a simple three chord structure arranged to support a singer with no more backing than an acoustic guitar and harmonica. Guitar Noise has covered several classic Bob Dylan songs in our lessons.
Some of you may agree with the “Easy” label, but our arrangement of the Bob Dylan favorite Lay Lady Lay (from the album, “Nashville Skyline”) can be played very easily with the use of a capo, plus a very simple picking pattern. More important, though, is that is can be used as a great lesson to help you get used to switching between open position chords and basic barre chords. With some practice and patience, you should find yourself playing it well in no time.
Taking advantage of our MP3 lessons, Tangled Up In Blue is a great song for us to focus on strumming. We take another song from Blood on the Tracks, Simple Twist of Fate to use as a lesson in chord progressions and chord construction in open tuning. We also use this song to practice strumming and work on string muting.
We also have a rather faithful arrangement of Buckets Of Rain, the closing song from Bob Dylan’s immortal album, “Blood on the Tracks.” Using open D (or open E) tuning, as well as a steady (and incredibly easy) bass part, it’s easy to make this song sound really good. And, it’s excellent practice both for honing your finger picking technique as well as for developing a good sense of syncopation.
If Not For You is a another very easy song. Our simple arrangement of this classic will help you with figuring out the basics of playing slide guitar.
In our second lesson Open Tuning, Here There Be Monsters, we learn how to put together a fretboard map and use it to figure out chords in open tuning. Follow along until you reach our arrangement of Shelter From The Storm.
Other useful guitar tricks appear in the lesson Connecting The Dots Part 3, which features an example from You Ain’t Going Nowehere.
Our beginner’s lesson on basic travis finger picking includes a lesson on playing Blowin’ in the Wind.
The Dylan classic Knockin on Heaven’s Door also appears in two other Guitar Noise lessons: Tricks of the Trade and Leading Questions.
