Bob Dylan
Knockin' on Heaven's Door chords
Knockin' on Heaven's Door by Bob Dylan is a beginner song in G, played with no capo. The whole sheet is 4 chords (G, D, Am, C) across 3 sections: Intro → Verse ×3 → Chorus. Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength. It sits at roughly 70 BPM.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: G → D, 6 times.
- Difficulty
- Beginnerno barre needed
- Key
- Gwith no capo
- Tempo
- 70BPM
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 4all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Intro♩=70
Verse× 3 · ♩=70
Chorus♩=70
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Two bars carry almost the whole song, and the only thing that changes between them is the last chord: the verse walks G – D – Am, then repeats as G – D – C. Every sung line sits on top of that same loop, so once this four-bar pattern is in your hands you can play the whole record. The G to D change is the one that needs work — put D on beat one so it gets two full beats, and leave Am (or C) only the last two. Counting “one-two-three-four” out loud is what stops the Am from arriving half a beat late.
The Am to C change looks harder than it is. In Am (x02210) your index finger already sits on the B string at fret 1, and in C (x32010) it stays there; the middle finger stays on the D string at fret 2 as well. Only the ring finger moves, from the G string at fret 2 across to the A string at fret 3. Practise that one move on its own for two minutes and the song unlocks. Keep the right hand plain: four downstrokes per bar with a quiet upstroke between beats, and let the open strings ring instead of chopping them short.
Set a metronome to 60 and loop G – D – Am – G – D – C without stopping, four beats per chord. Do not restart when you fumble; keep the strumming hand moving and repair the fingering on the next lap, because a broken groove teaches you more bad habits than a wrong note does. When the loop feels automatic, move to 70 and add a single bass note on beat one of every chord. This is also the easiest song in the world to sing over, since every chord change lands on the same word each time round.
How to practise Knockin' on Heaven's Door
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → Am (x-0-2-2-1-0, beginner) → C (x-3-2-0-1-0, beginner)
4 of the 4 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
G → D6×D → Am3×D → C3×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- Gevery section
- Devery section
- Amevery section
- Cevery section
Climb the tempo ladder
Start at 42 BPM and move up only when a full pass is clean: 42 → 53 → 63 → 70 BPM. The recorded feel is around 70 BPM, and the last step is the one that always feels like a jump. Stay at 63 for longer than feels necessary.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing Knockin' on Heaven's Door with a capo
This sheet needs no capo. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capoas written
G D Am C
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 1
F# C# Abm B
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 2
F C Gm Bb
1 of 4 stay open
Fret 3
E B F#m A
2 of 4 stay open
Fret 4
Eb Bb Fm Ab
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 5
D A Em G
4 of 4 stay open
Fret 6
C# Ab Ebm F#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 7
C G Dm F
3 of 4 stay open
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If Knockin' on Heaven's Door clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More beginner songs to learn after this one: Wonderwall, Let It Be, Creep, Hallelujah.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in Knockin' on Heaven's Door turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
116bars of this chord across the songbook
26songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 27×.
363bars of this chord across the songbook
54songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 115×.