The fingerstyle folk guitar of Bob Dylan (Part 1)

How to play "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright" with Travis picking

This week, we’ll be exploring the fingerstyle folk guitar playing of Bob Dylan by learning the song “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” as heard on his 1963 album The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.

There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’ll be splitting this into two parts: In Part 1, we’ll focus on the travis picking fingerstyle guitar technique that Bob Dylan uses, and in later posts we’ll go into greater detail and look a little bit at the music theory. Let’s dive in!

Here’s my rendition based on transcribing the record by ear. I've tried to be as accurate to the recording as possible, but it was surprisingly difficult as I found that Bob Dylan’s playing is, well, kind of freewheelin’ - it’s filled with improvisational ornaments that sometimes make the rhythm skip and hop in unexpected ways, which is probably one of the reasons why I love this song!

This fingerpicking might seem complicated, but at the heart of it is a very simple technique known as Travis picking - once you get the hang of it, your fingers will naturally find their way around the strings. Let’s break it down.

Chord shapes

The song is in E major, but is played with a Capo on the 4th fret using the open C position. Put your capo on the 4th fret and play an open C chord. This is going to be the home for all the chord shapes that we will be using. Don’t worry if you don’t understand everything yet - just learn the shapes and we will go through them later.

C G7 Am
It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe

F C/G G7
If you don’t know by now

C G7 Am
An’ it ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe

D7/Gb G G7
It’ll never do somehow

C/G C7/G
When your rooster crows at the break of dawn

F D7/Gb
Look out your window and I’ll be gone

C G7 Am F
You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on

C G7 C
Don’t think twice, it’s all right

Travis picking

Once your fretting hand is comfortable with those chord shapes, let’s dive into how to incorporate Travis picking into your playing.

Travis picking is one of the most popular fingerstyle folk guitar techniques and is also known sometimes as pattern picking or alternating-thumb style. I like the latter term as it’s quite descriptive - you use your thumb to play the bass notes while alternating between the different chord shapes throughout the song.

You use Travis picking when playing in 4/4 time signature, meaning you should be able to count 4 beats in every measure and tapping your foot to the song should feel quite natural. The thumb plays on every beat of the measure and typically highlights strong notes of the chord such as the root or the 5th, while other fingers fill in the gaps both rhythmically and harmonically.

To open it up a bit, let’s just focus on playing the first measure of the song - once you get this part, I promise the rest of the song will be easy.

For notes on the low strings (EAD), pluck the note with your thumb. For notes on the high strings (GBE), pluck the string with whatever finger feels most natural. See if you can play this on repeat - you should be able to vamp on it like a loop:

You should feel how your thumb drives the rhythm, kind of like a metronome, while your other fingers play the off-beats in a syncopated manner. If that feels difficult, try focusing only on the notes played by your thumb.

Master the thumb

When you’re comfortable vamping the first bar using Travis picking, we can move on to the rest of the intro. But before diving into the transcription, let’s talk about the thumb.

The thumb is the most important part of Travis picking not only because it carries the beat and drives the rhythm forward, but also because it’s the bass note and therefore has a strong influence on each chord’s context and direction. You may have noticed that we have slash chords listed above such as C/G, Am/G and D7/Gb - these are defined by the bass notes played by the thumb, and we will go into a little more detail about them in a later post.

For now, let’s play the intro of the song but using the notes of the thumb only:

Try to practice so that it feels automatic. With a bit of practice, your thumb should not only be strong enough to keep a steady rhythm, but also develop muscle memory so that it automatically knows where to move based on the chord you’re playing. With the thumb on autopilot, you can much more easily use your other fingers for syncopated picking patterns, ornamental fills or even for playing the melody.

Playing the intro

Now that you have the thumb down, let’s bring in the other fingers:

One tricky part that recurs throughout the song is the use of hammer-ons, which are indicted with the slurs in the notation (little curved lines). A hammer-on is played by sharply bringing your fretting-hand finger onto the fingerboard.

The tricky thing in this song is that these hammer-ons are played as part of bar chords, meaning that you have to do some ninja moves with your fingers to make sure they don’t get in the way.

Wrapping up

So that’s it! You should now be able to play the intro to “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright” by Bob Dylan. Stay tuned for Part 2 of this series, where we will go look at the verse and chorus and explore a bit more music theory while we’re at it.

Was this useful? Is there anything I should open up in more detail? Any songs or topics you’d like me to explore? Please leave a comment below or shoot me an email!