Sound-In-Time

For convenience, here's the song again.

From the start to 00:05, a warm, clear guitar comes in played with a pick on an F chord, being strummed straight on the first three downbeats and with a triplet-y feel on the latter half;

1, 2, 3, AND-4, AND-1. 

At 00:05 seconds, Dylan's voice lightly reverberated singing the chorus, along with the the warm electric guitar in the left ear coming and in arpeggiating the chords, 

"Hey, Mr Tambourine Man, play a song for me",

The chorus is a period, the first half being the antecedent, and the second half being the consequent.

Dylan's voice sings out clear, questioning, as he rests on the V chord, "there is no place I'm going to".  The guitar chugs along beautifully , moving the song forward steadly through the chorus.

00:28 seconds- the guitar returns to its pace in the beginning, with dylan's left pinky playing a Bb A G A melody over the chord to the constant strumming rhythm, creating 4-3, then a 2-3 sus chord.  

00:31 seconds-  Dylan sings the first verse to the same melody as the chorus, "Well I know that evening's empire has returned into sand".  The verse, however goes between the I and the IV chord more times to make room for more words.  Dylan seems to hang on the the IV chord as he sings until at, 41 seconds the ii7 brings the song to the resting place of the V.

At 00:45  he repeats the sequence with "My weariness amazes me, I'm branded on my feet, I have no one to meet".  Dylan's vocals fit his lyrics amazingly, sounding full of hope and adventure, but restrained at the same time, perfect for a young man looking out at the future with excitement.  

at oo:58, the electric guitar crescendos slightly, and begins to play more syncopated lines and picking patterns, as if he, like the narrator is waxing towards the yell at the tambourine man in the coming refrain at 1:01, where the chorus repeats.  

Dylan's refrain is left bare by the verse, his yell of "HEEEY"  is now more destitute, but not at all depressing; he is just a man that is yearning for something to fill his life.

At 1:26, he starts the new verse in this same vein, "Take me on a trip upon your magic swirling ship, my senses have been stripped, my hands can't feel to grip, my toes too numb to step, wait only for my boot heels to be wandering".  The narrator is actively reaching out for new things, for change, for an exciting chapter in his life to begin as he wanders the streets.  The verse is longer, with extra iterations of the I-IV chord change in between the half cadences, to make room for his pleas and exaltations.  

1:45, "I'm ready to go anywheeeere, I'm ready for to fade into my own parade, cast your dancing spell my way I promise to go wondering", again the narrator is pleading with the tambourine man to give him meaning, and is ready to absolve away his sense of self, to give way to the jingle jangle morning, and fade.

at 1:59, the chorus repeats, much the same as before.  Dylan's voice seems to be getting a tinge of irish folk singer in its inflection, as if he is trying to channel the ghost of Dylan Thomas himself. 

at 2:25, the 3rd verse starts with a warning, "Though you might hear laughing spinning, swinging madly across the sun, its not aimed at anyone.  It's just escaping on the run..."  The laughter is the narrator's explosion into the chaos of the unknown, which he yearns for, and the warning is to convey that this wild passionate leap is not for anything but to do it, to escape on the run.  

At 2:40- the guitar begins to play around a little bit more, and instead of just syncopated arpeggios it begins to play little melodies in the background.  I think perhaps the session musician didn't really know the song at first, but just the chords, and as he got more comfortable he began to play around a little bit; Dylan was notorious for not teaching the musicians around him the songs more than one play-through. 

at 3:00, the chorus starts anew, and the guitar goes back to its arpeggiations.

at 3:24, Dylan starts soloing on his harmonica over the verse chords, bending a c and e diad from the C chord into the F, after which he follows the vocal melody pretty closely; the harmonica imitating dylan works well because of the raspy qualities of the both of the sounds, one high and piercing, one low and full. 

at 3:44, the second half of the verse begins to dylan bending a G on the harmonica up and done as his guitar chugs along, the electric guitar shimmering in the left ear with renewed yet restrained intensity.  

at 4:02, the solo ends with an authentic cadence, and 4 definite F blows into the harmonica.  

at 4:07, the final verse starts, with Dylan's guitar assuming a more quiet role for the focus on the concluding stanza: "So take me disappearing down the smoke rings of my mind... far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow".  The narrator asserts that his yearning cannot be satisfied by just earthly, physical things, but only through spiritual methods.

"Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free, silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands, with all memory and fate, driven deep beneath the waves, let me forget about today until tomorrow."  Dylan seems to scream these words without screaming, to put extra emphasis on their meaning without changing much of the inflection of his singing style, and the theme of living in the moment without thinking of anything else, of phenomenological living, seems all the more beautiful.  

At 4:50 Dylan sings the chorus, this time with a little more wavering in his voice, for the final time, and follows it with a harmonica solo fade out.