Bob Dylan - Shelter From the Storm Guitar Lesson

Added: 2026-05-31

[00:00:01][music] >> It wasn't another [singing and music] lightning, one of all the blood.

[00:00:09]Black dress was all [singing] about you and the road was full of mud.

[00:00:14]I came in from the wilderness, a creature full of flaws.

[00:00:18]"Come in." she [music and singing] said, "I'll give you shelter from the storm."

[00:00:25]>> [music] >> And if I pass [music and singing] this way again, you can rest assured.

[00:00:35]I'll always do my [singing and music] best for her and I give my word.

[00:00:39]A wild full of still [music] eyed men who are fighting to be warm. [singing] "Come in." she said, "I'll give you shelter [music] from the storm."

[00:00:47][singing] Hey everyone, welcome to MT Guitar.

[00:01:10][music] Today I want to teach to you one of my favorite Bob Dylan songs from my favorite Bob Dylan album. This is Shelter from the Storm off of Blood on the Tracks. And Bob extensively used this open D tuning with capo second fret making it open E.

[00:01:24]Yeah, he was just really in the zone as far as writing songs with this tuning.

[00:01:29]Really cool [music] to be able to play some nice chord progressions with these open tunings.

[00:01:35]And yeah, I worked out this chord melody as well. So, you've got three chords repeating. There's a lot to uncover if you want to play this up the neck.

[00:01:44]Right?

[00:01:48]>> [music] >> So, I'm going to write out a nice little chord melody arrangement of that on the Patreon, at patreon.com/mtguitar.

[00:01:59]And uh do subscribe. We're going to zoom in and cover this groove and strumming pattern. It's basically like a bass [music] down up down up down up. All right?

[00:02:08]Seems simple, but it's a good thing to be able to really lock into these grooves that, you know, you have a strophic form, meaning the form is repeating, so we really want to have no doubt [music] about the groove.

[00:02:22]So, go ahead and strum along with me in this lesson as we zoom in. Let's go ahead and zoom in.

[00:02:27]All right, so we're going to get into open D tuning here, so you're going to tune your E string to D.

[00:02:33]All right?

[00:02:34]>> [music] >> Leave the A where it is.

[00:02:37]Leave the D where it is.

[00:02:39]The G goes to F sharp.

[00:02:42]Right about there.

[00:02:44]A Uh sorry, B [music] goes to A, second string.

[00:02:48]E goes to D.

[00:02:50]All right? Go ahead and pause the video if you need to to get into that tuning.

[00:02:53]Grab a capo, throw on second fret.

[00:02:56]Beautiful open E tuning. All right.

[00:02:59]>> [music] >> Now we have our first chord, lucky for us, nice and open. So, bass or >> [music] >> first couple bass strings, either way, meaning sixth string by itself or sixth and fifth >> [music] >> is the first beat of each bar.

[00:03:19]Followed by a down up down up down up three times, cuz we have four beats, right? So, one two [music] and three and four and And that is a four-bar intro [music] right there. All right?

[00:03:39]>> [music] >> It was in another lifetime.

[00:03:42]>> Now you can see as the chords change, the strumming does not change. So, we just keep going with that bass down up down up down up each bar.

[00:03:51]>> [music] >> All right. Now, the chords [music] are pretty simple. Here we have an E chord.

[00:03:58]This is our B.

[00:04:02]It's kind of a B sus. Well, it's not kind of it. It is a B sus 4. [music] You in order to have sort of a B chord, you'd have to fret some other notes. So, in this case, it's open 4th, open 3rd open open.

[00:04:19]Now, if you want to make it a little cleaner, you can mute this 4th string.

[00:04:24]>> [music] >> But, I'm pretty sure Bob isn't, so it doesn't really matter. This is very beautiful to have the every string ring out here.

[00:04:33]But, we do kind of want to avoid the 6th string. We don't really need this bass anymore. [music] So, the bass goes from 6th string open >> [music] >> to the 5th string for this 4 0 3 0 0 chord. That's a B sus.

[00:04:49]Now, we go to A.

[00:04:51]And which is a 2 0 1 [music] 2 0.

[00:04:56]Halfway through, Bob tends to release that 2nd string to open.

[00:05:01]>> [music] >> It's up to you when you want to do it.

[00:05:03]You can also keep it the entire time.

[00:05:07]Sounds nice [music] either way.

[00:05:11]I tend to release it as Bob does. So >> [music] >> bass down up down up down up with 2nd fret down up down open.

[00:05:23]Back to the open. So, it's [music] a four-bar phrase. First bar 2nd bar 3rd bar 4th bar repeat.

[00:05:41]>> [music] >> It was in another >> [singing] >> lifetime when I told her blood.

[00:05:47]I came in >> [singing and music] >> from the wind and rain.

[00:05:51]>> Sorry, those aren't the lyrics.

[00:05:53]>> [singing and music] [music] [singing] >> And then there's always a refrain.

[00:06:05]>> [music] >> Meaning just sort of a interlude to finish [music] the form.

[00:06:11]And then he hops back in.

[00:06:15]So, [music] as you can see, it's somewhat trance-like. It really just repeats and repeats. I think Bob was into that sort of you know, it's just very like um yeah, like a like a almost like a hypnotic kind of thing. So, here I'll teach you this really briefly, but really at the Patreon we'll have it more in detail.

[00:06:37]Um but this is going to be not too long of a video, so >> [music] >> the melody is fifth fret, second string.

[00:06:48]>> [music] >> All right, so we have fifth fret and an open first two strings here.

[00:06:53]>> [music] >> Go up to ninth fret to 12th fret. It looks like the 14th fret, but we're on capo two, remember?

[00:06:59]So, that's 12th fret.

[00:07:01]And we have this chord here, open open uh 11 10 12.

[00:07:07]Bring it down a whole step for your A.

[00:07:11]You know, 2 9 8 10.

[00:07:14]10 goes to uh 10 goes to 9 >> [music] >> to open. So, that would be This time >> [music] >> 12 on the first string.

[00:07:31]Then we add our chord in here.

[00:07:33]You know, 11 10 12 12.

[00:07:37]Here's a little bit tricky.

[00:07:39]Same chord as before. [music] This time we move it to fifth fret, first string.

[00:07:45]>> [music] >> Same thing.

[00:07:54]>> [music] >> This time, 7407 [singing] 7777 [music] everywhere, 5555 everywhere.

[00:08:04]See?

[00:08:07]Takes a little bit of getting used to it, but >> [music] >> So, let's do it again. 3 4 >> [music] >> All right.

[00:08:30]>> [music] [music] [music] >> So, I recommend playing along or playing around with this tuning >> [music] >> and playing along with the song.

[00:08:54]Uh to to figure out the tuning here.

[00:08:57]It's kind of fun.

[00:08:59]You can [music] also just do bar chords, right? But you can add in little notes if you kind of get, you know, a little bit bored of the same old chords.

[00:09:13]Doesn't necessarily make it better, but it you know, it might add a little bit of variety if you want to add a few notes. That's it. It's pretty short lesson. You just go go go. Strophic folk forms uh like this will just be endless, right? The same old chords over and over again, but absolutely beautiful.

[00:09:29]And um Bob Dylan at its finest, Blood on the Tracks. All right, everyone. There it is.

[00:09:35]Take care. We'll see you next lesson.

[00:09:37]Bye.