Chords for Buckets of Rain - Bob Dylan Guitar Lesson (with tabs!)

Hey y'all, welcome to another Strum Chum session.
I'm Toni Lindgren and this week
I'm gonna be showing you Buckets of Rain by Bob Dylan.
This song comes from his 1975 album Love in the Tracks.
What makes this album unique is that Dylan wrote most of the tunes in open E.
So when he recorded Buckets of Rain his guitar was tuned E, [E] B, E,
G sharp, B, E.
And when we hit those all together, we get this nice ringing open E chord.
What he did on Buckets of Rain with that was he
_ just pedaled these two notes, this E and
the E above it back and forth [F] while he played the [E] fingerpicking part. _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ It sounds cool, but you definitely miss something without the bass there giving you all [Bb] the root notes.
_ So what we're gonna do today is just modify this open E tuning ever so slightly
by dropping [B] this B back down to an A.
_ [Bb] _ _ [E] So now I have my guitar tuned to E, A, E, G sharp, B, E.
_ And before we leave the subject,
[Db] [Eb] I'm sure some of you are nervous about tuning your guitar up this way.
And rightfully so, you can do some real damage if you tune your guitar too high.
I think open E is generally within reason for most guitars.
In my case, I use [E] light gauge strings on this guitar.
So I went online and found a string tension calculator to be safe and
discovered that when I tune my guitar up to this open E, I add about 12 pounds of tension.
And when I throw medium gauge strings on this guitar,
which I think most guitars are built to be able to handle medium gauge, that adds about 30 pounds tension.
So for me, that was just a nice piece of mind to go out and find those numbers and make sure I wasn't gonna do
any real structural damage.
_ But alternatively, if you're nervous about it, _
you can tune your guitar down to D, [N] G, D, F sharp, A, [E] D,
and then just slap a capo on on the second fret and you'll be right there with [C] us.
So now that we're all tuned up, let's get into the good stuff.
[G] There are three [C] parts to the song.
Instrumental A,
verse, and instrumental B.
_ Once we learn [Ab] those three parts, we just piece them together in the form [C] and then we're ready to go.
So the form goes like this. _ _ _ _ _ _
So starting at the top, let's first learn instrumental A, the introduction to the song.
I'll play it up to tempo and then I'll slow it down and [Ebm] help break it down.
[E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ [B] _ _ _ _
[Gb] _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ Okay, so let's break that down and play it as slowly as possible.
Here we go. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
[A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ So the tricky parts there are at the top
_ _ _ _ _ _ with that slide and then on [A] this pull off, _ [E] _
_ _ _ as you hit this top E string,
you're gonna want to pull off with your first finger.
_ _ So it's kind of a weird simultaneous move.
So once more on that little move. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ So that first little bit sounds like_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ And then the next part is tricky because as you hit your [D] low A,
you're going to be hammering on with your pinky on the second fret.
So, _
slowly, it's gonna look like this.
[A] _ _ _
_ _ _ That's where you hammer on with a second fret as you hit that low A note and _ _ then pull off right away with your pinky. _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ So now we have_ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
And then here we have our descending line.
This is modified a little bit from the original
_ because he just plays these upper strings.
So we're trying to get the_
maintain the bass note here.
So it's just slightly different from the original at this point.
[B] _ _ _ [A] _
_ [E] _ _ _ [B] _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ [G] So now we can move on to [Ab] the verse, which is [D] pretty similar to the instrumental and starts out the exact same way.
I'll play it up to tempo again, and then I'll slow it down after [E] that. _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [A] _ _ _ _ _ [E] _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _
_ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Eb] And then once more really slowly.
_ [E] _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ [B] _
_ [A] _ _ [E] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _
[E] _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [N] So now we're already at the third and final part, which is instrumental B,
which is essentially [G] instrumental A with the first four bars being [Gb] slightly different.
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [A] _ _ _
_ _ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [Gb] _ _ _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _
So slowing that way down, it sounds like this. _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ [A] _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ [E] _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ _ [B] _ _ [A] _
_ [E] _ _ _ [Gb] _ _ [E] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _
_ _ _ _ [Ab] _ So that's the whole song.
It's those three parts, and once you get the first part down, the rest is [Db] smooth sailing.
It's all essentially a variation on that.
I [Ab] hope this was helpful for you guys.
Don't forget to hit subscribe if you haven't yet.
I want to give a huge thanks to everyone on Patreon that makes these videos possible and
_ definitely let me know in the comments if you have any ideas for other videos you want to see, [Db] whether it's lessons or _
you know, juggling.
[Ab] I'm not very good at juggling, but I would do that if you guys really want to see it.
Otherwise, take care, and I'll see you next time. _ _ _ _ _ _ _
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[Db] _ _ _ _ _ _ [Ab] _ _
_ _ _ _ _ _ [Cm] _ _
[Ab] _ _ _ _ _ _ [N] _ _