Bob Dylan
The printable guitar and ukulele tab PDFs below work for many versions of this Bob Dylan classic because they’re rather similar except for speed, phrasing and accompaniment.
The most famous versions of this song are between Bob Dylan’s original* and Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash’s swingin’ country jig version.
Bob Dylan
There are two printable sets of guitar and ukulele tab PDFs for this song: one with Bob Dylan’s lyrics and one with his and mine.
On Bob Dylan’s site, Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door only has two verses of lyrics. Those would be verses 1 and 3 in my arrangement.
When he performed it on MTV Unplugged in 1995, though, he put in an additional verse that is verse 2 in this arrangement… because it best fits between the original two verses, in my opinion.
The printable PDF tabs below are for Octopus’ Garden, by Ringo Starr of the Beatles. However, they work for two ways of performing the song. The first is the original you know.
It’s hard to tab gospel music, if you know what gospel music can be like to perform with all its passionate fervour, improvisation and such. This isn’t meant as a tab as much as a starting guide for you to create your own version of this popular gospel. The version below is a relatively quiet version from which I created the guitar and ukulele tabs found below that.
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Walter Hawkins
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Going Up Yonder, Walter Hawkins Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.
I picked the choral version above to tab because it was the most “practical” one to tab. You can document something reasonably similar to that version, aside from all the harmony parts you couldn’t sing simultaneously if you were to do this solo. However, if you’re adventurous, you can add your own touches to this song and make it as different from the version above as the version below… all 10 minutes of it! It is soloed by Tramaine Hawkins.
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It’s generally the same style so you should be able to use pretty much the same chords if you sing it using the notes in the tab PDFs. However, it has a complete different swing and swagger. You could add a reasonably facsimile with your singing and some funky strumming if you give it a try.
Enjoy!
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 9.0
If you ever need to practice or familiarize yourself or someone with melismas (singing of a single syllable while moving between different notes), this song is a lovely example. Listen to the video below of Sarah McLachlan, Jewel and the Indigo Girls at Lilith Fair and see how many words with one syllables they stretch onto more than one note, or just any syllable having the same thing done to it. No need to count precisely. Just get an idea why I say this song is a great example of a song containing melismas, besides it being a lovely song rather than just some bad songwriting where the writer had to use melismas force things to fit into phrases. Here, the tune is simple and allows for “decorations” with melismas. It’s quite a difference!
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In tabbing this song, while I based it on another year’s Lilith Fair recording with the Dixie Chicks instead of the Indigo Girls (that sounded funny), I did not include all the melismas you heard. Unless you can sing like Sarah McLachlan or Jewel or some of them other gals, you’re not going to be able to pull off all those melismas anyway… and you wouldn’t be on this site scouring for music. 🙂
I just put in a few. You can add more if you like. The tune is robust enough to handle it. that’s why it’s been around since the 1600s.
With a tune around since the 1600s, there are also many lyric versions for it. Oddly enough, though, when I went to source some of them because I didn’t think the ones used in the Lilith Fair concerts were all that “cohesive” or “flowing”, I still couldn’t find a set I liked. So I wrote my own. Not completely off the path, but rather similar, with more cohesiveness and flow, in my opinion. You can read more on that on my poetry blog, if you care.
All you need to know is my reworked lyrics were generally meant for me. I’m not going to force it upon anyone, which is why in the PDFs you download of this song, there are also the lyrics used in the Lilith Fair concerts. It’s quite close to most other popular recordings of the song, too.
Furthermore, I’ve put each version in two keys, G and C, because you’re probably going to find one of them challenging pending your voice range. Either that or it won’t sound as good. I am challenged to sing it in C, with all those high notes, but the version an octave lower just sounds terrible. This ain’t Russian bass choral music, you know!
Anyhow, give this beautiful song a try. Give it some patience in working out some melismas. You’ll be glad you did!
Water Is Wide, Traditional Guitar Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Water Is Wide, Traditional Guitar Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
Water Is Wide, Traditional Ukulele Tabs Letter Sized PDF
Water Is Wide, Traditional Ukulele Tabs Tabloid Sized PDF
If the letter size tabs (8.5″ x 11″) are too small for your eyes, you can either enlarge to tabloid size (11″ x 17″) using an automatic enlarge feature on many photocopiers, or download the tabloid sized versions for printing. The tabloid size tabs can be inserted into a typical letter sized binder on the 11″ size, and folded almost in half to fit. You just open each tab to use it.
Please click here for guitar and ukulele tabs and chords to other songs on this blog.
Flesch-Kincaid Grade Reading Level: 7.1
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