Song Help Request need help with Knocking on Heaven's Door please

UU posted a tutorial for Knocking on Heaven's Door. I have been trying to learn it. I have the strum down and the chord transition from G to D mid strum and know the strumming pattern but I am trying to work on my strumming in time to this( and other songs), I am using a metronome to practice but I am not sure how many beats of the strum would be in one measure so I can set up my metronome speed . I have noticed that I can play the song however when I try to play the song with the the play along, I tend to lose the rhythm and start strumming a different pattern when the vocals start. I have a tendency to change my timing and strumming to match the vocals, how do I overcome this? Any suggestions?

Hi, I'm gonna throw in my two cents for what it's worth - possibly not much

I think that the vocals can throw you a bit with this song (and some others by Dylan). I learnt to play this a few months ago (although not the UU version, which I haven't seen) and just the first line "Mama, take this badge off of me" kept causing me to lose the beat as I tried to play along. I'm not sure exactly why - something to do with the meter of the line possibly, and how it sits above the underlying chords. Someone more technically minded would have a better idea.

I found it helpful to practice the changes while repeating the "ooh ooh, ooh ooh" bit from the intro over and over again. Until they were so ingrained in my muscle memory that I could pretty much sing anything over the top of them without missing a beat.

Thank you very much for responding to my question. I appreciate the help.

I haven't tried to play this on uke but people say you have to know how to play a song really well with teh strum pattern and sing it really well with all the timing right before you can put the together really well iwthout messing them up.

The example i've got is I'm yours. Because I had to learn the song to sing it its much slower for me to learn how to sing it with playing, even though playing it is really easy but when it comes to a harder song that i know i find it much better to sing it and play it.

What strum pattern and chords are you using for knockin on heavens door. If you tell me i'll give it a try as i used to be able to play it on guitar with any dramas.

http://www.musicnotes.com/images/productimages/large/mtd/MN0066133.gif

I don't know if you can read music or not but looking at this image of the score with chords for guitar shows me what you need to know.

The first bar is split over two chords. So whatever your stumming pattern is for a whole bar, you have to divide in two and play half on each chord. You may even want to alter the strum pattern so it sounds better with this song.

I say this because with Cynthia Lin's uke lessons, she demonstrates this issue of splitting a bar pretty well in some of her tuts and sometimes she changes the strum pattern.

If you can't read music, you may find this matter harder to understand.

Also the other thing i notice from the score is that the lyrics are not begun on the first beat but on teh second. The timing is 4/4 so there are four beats to the bar.

So if you have the right strum pattern, and you split it properly, you could try just working on the first line , making sure you come in at the right time so that you matching the strum correctly with the lyrics.

Let me know if this makes sense and if you have any questions.