GUITARHABITS

Knocking on Heavens Door Guitar Lesson

March 8, 2022 by Klaus Crow

Knocking on heavens door - Bob Dylan / Guns 'n Roses - Guitar Lesson

Hi Folks,

Today I’m going to teach you how to play “Knocking on heavens door” by Bob Dylan, also covered by Guns ‘n Roses. This is a great song to learn on the guitar and a “must” to have on your repertoire :)

It’s an easy version for beginners using open chords and a basic strumming pattern to make the learning process as smooth as possible.

How to Play “Knocking on heavens door” on Guitar

Knocking on heavens door is played with 4 chords: G – D – Am – C

You can learn the chords on The 8 Most Important Guitar Chords for Beginners

Here are two basic strumming patterns you can use to play the song:

Basic strumming pattern #1:
/ G ↓↓ D ↓↓ / Am ↓↓↓↓ / G ↓↓ D ↓↓ / C ↓↓↓↓ /

Basic strumming pattern #2:
/ G ↓↓↑ D ↓↓↑ / Am ↓↓↓↑↓↓↓↑ / G ↓↓ D ↓↓ / C ↓↓↓↑↓↓↓↑ /

Watch the video guitar lesson below to learn the entire song step by step.

Guitar Music & Health Goals for 2022

By Klaus Crow 19 Comments

January 7, 2022 by Klaus Crow

Happy new year to all of you! May 2022 bring you good health and utmost joy. While some things are beyond our control there is a lot we can do ourselves to improve our health and overall happiness.

As a practicing musician (and a human being) it’s important to maintain a good physical and mental state, so I like to do whatever I can to work on my health and strengthen my immune system and of course this comes in phases. Life works like that. It’s high tide and low tide, its Ying and Yang. It’s all part of the game, as long as you get back up again and go for it.

For music and guitar goals it’s the same thing. I set out goals where some survive and others don’t and that’s okay. It’s the intention that matters.

For me goal setting makes me happy, that’s why I do it. It’s not the result I’m after to be fulfilled, it’s the writing down of things that I want to do, the process, the workflow, the effort and everything that occurs from that.

I write down my goals. Writing down goals makes the probability of executing them much higher. Writing them down in detail on a weekly or even daily basis will make that probability huge.

My Previous Guitar Goals

One of my guitar and music goals for 2021 was “improving my guitar skills”. Now I must admit that’s a little vague, because if learned one new guitar lick I would’ve reached that goal. So I’m going to make my goals more specific this time.

Another one of my goals was “writing songs”. Now that one I have accomplished. I’ve written 12 songs in the last year. I’ve written the music and lyrics, but I haven’t recorded them yet, so you can guess what’s coming.

I’ve performed before a live audience only once in 2021 which was a great joy, but any effort or attempt to start a band or musical group has not come off the ground because of all the covid restrictions.

For all my other goals in the categories “health”, “mind”, “work”, “family and friends” I did well. In the category “health” it was on and off, but I always bounced back. I regularly drink water (much more than I used to do), I stretch a lot, I have times were I don’t eat after 7 or 8 p.m. and I work hard to get my 7 to 8 hours of sleep.

I also spent a lot more time with my kids in 2021. I played a lot of soccer with the boys, we did a lot of family trips and now I’m teaching all three kids to play drums (They prefer drums over guitar. Haha!)

Now let’s take a look at some awesome happy guitar and music goals to have a vision and aim to realize some good stuff for 2022.

4 Chord Guitar Songs

By Klaus Crow 5 Comments

September 8, 2022 by Klaus Crow

Learning to play guitar can seem a bit challenging, but did you know you can play millions of songs with just four easy guitar chords? Yes you can, absolutely!

With 4 simple guitar chords you can play songs from any genre like pop, rock, campfire or 60’s songs. Choose your pick.

4 Chords for Most Songs

The 4 chords, 4 chord progression and 4 chord songs are related to the 80/20 principle. It means that 20% of causes / input (20% of all chords and progressions) leads to 80% of results / output (80% of the songs). The 80/20 principle, als called the Pareto principle, can be applied to all things in life, and for guitar playing we can see it in learning 4 chord songs.

There are a few basic chords that you need to learn. With those basic chords you can build the most common 4-chord-progressions to play almost any song you want.

4 Chord Progressions

You can build a 4 chord progression from the notes of the major scale or natural minor scale. In music we use roman numerals to indicate the order of chords in a chord progression. Let’s take the chords built of the C Major scale for example – The key of C:

I = C Major
ii = D minor
iii = E minor
IV = F Major
V = G Major
vi = A minor
vii = Bdim.

Now one of the most common 4 chord progression is I – V – vi – IV ( 1 – 5 – 6 – 4 ) If we follow the numeral numbers in the key of C we end up with the chord progression: C – G – Am – F. You can follow this chord progression throughout the whole song.

Why Learn To Play Guitar?

By Klaus Crow Leave a Comment

November 7, 2021 by Klaus Crow

Author: Alex Bruce of Guitartricks.com

The question of why to learn an instrument is a well-answered one: To learn a new skill, to develop musicality, to have a creative outlet, to have fun, and so on. But for beginner guitarists or those thinking about starting, the question is specifically why learn guitar?

Well, lots of reasons is the short answer.

The main theme linking so many of the reasons, though, is the guitar’s ubiquity – its common-ness of use, its being so present in so much music and so many groups and ensembles.

Here are some examples of how popularity translates into reasons to learn guitar:

Reference Material

Firstly, the huge majority of contemporary music features at least one guitar part, meaning the wealth of songs to learn is possibly greater for the guitarist than for any other aspiring instrumentalist.

Secondly, the abundance of online lessons, tutorials, how-to guides, and repair tutorials that has sprung up around the instrument’s omnipresence means that a guitarist can find just about anything they need at any stage of their progress.

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