Have FUN with THIS CLASSIC Intro | I Walk The Line Intro Lesson

Foreign.

Enthusiasts. I'm going to show you step by step how to play the intro to Johnny Cash's Walk the Line. And not only that, I'm going to show you a really cool technique for introducing strumming into this intro as well.

So we're going to be going over a walking baseline for this intro. And for the most part, it's just quarter notes and eight, eighth note. So the rhythm is mostly going to.

Be 1, 2, 3 and 4. And 1, 2, 3 and 4, and 1, 2, 3 and 4 and etc.

Etc. The great thing about this intro is it's pretty simple for beginners. It's mostly the open strings. We will be mostly using the second frets and the fourth frets. And every once in a while, we will come on this first fret just one time over a B7 chord. So. So let's start off with the pickup. So the pickup is the part that comes before the song or leads us into the song. And it's just three notes. It's an open two, four. Okay. And I'm mostly using fingers one and three on a lot of this song, so I'll try and mention that as I go through. So we have the top string open to four. Okay. So it's. And four.

And.

Okay, one more time. Open two, four. Now we come to the first measure, and this will be played under an A chord. We're going to be doing the open A string, the open E string, and then back to the A string open twice.

And then two, four. So there's that two, four again with fingers one, three. Okay, so from the beginning, it would be.

0, 2, 4, 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And okay, and 4.

And 1, 2, 3 and 4.

And so that's our first couple of measures. The next measure is over a D chord. So the D chord is the open D string. The open A string. The open D string twice and then four, two.

On A string. Sorry, losing my mind here. Now we come back to an A chord, but we're playing something a little bit different here. We're starting on the open A note, but if you listen to the recording, he comes down to a high note here. So we're playing the second fret on the D string. So it's open a second fret on the D string. Right back up to the open A twice.

And then four, two on the top string. So you can see we've mostly just been using the first and third finger. So let's go through just that first line.

So we got 1, 2, 3, and 4.

And.

Okay, so that's first line. Now let's move on to the second line where we're playing over our first E chord here. Okay. And it's going to be open E string, second fret on the A string. And then this one, we're repeating the second fret on the A string, coming up to open E. Second fret on the E. Open E. So this one's.

Going to be 1, 2, 3, and 4. And again 1. 1, 2, 3, and four.

And now the next one, we're gonna have to switch our fingers up a little bit because we're playing over a B7 chord here. So we need to get this first fret on the D string. Okay? So what I would recommend. We just had our second finger. We just had our first finger on the second fret up here on the E string. I would put my second finger below and rotate this first finger up to the first fret finger. So how we're going to play this is second finger on the second fret of the A string, then first finger on the first fret of the D string, back to the second fret.

On the A string, then open and then 4, 2. So I would adjust my hand back now to fingers 3, 1. So if I go through that again, second finger starting here on the second fret, A string.

So let me just play those two measures together. So it's going to be E.

And then once you hear, you're getting to the intro of the song, and we're just going to be alternating between the E.

So, sixth string, fifth string.

All eighth notes. So let me take this through one time, top to bottom, and you guys can loop it. If you've got a vadame looper pedal, you can loop this as much as you need to and slow it down. But I'm going to go through one time slow and then one time a little bit faster. And I'm going to show you how we're going to spice this up with some strumming.

One, two, three, and four. And one.

Now a little faster.

1, 2, 3, and 4.

And.

Now you probably saw on that I didn't take my own advice and flip my finger up to that first fret. But fortunately, I'm fast enough that I could fix that on the fly and get the correct notes. But now you can see kind of more of the timing of the song. And this is where now it's important to you got to know the timing. Because if you don't know the timing down, we can't add this Cool little strumming thing that I'm going to show you next. So I'm going to show you now is a little bit more probably late beginner to early intermediate. But let me show you what it's going to sound like.

So you kind of get the idea now of what we're going to be doing. We're going to be playing this intro, but we're going to be going between playing almost what's like a lead line to strumming. That's why you got to get that timing down in the beginning. So let's get into this and show you how we're going to add this in. So everything's the same in terms of what you just learned, except we're going to be adding two 16th note strums after the one and after the two. What do I mean? So let's go to this A chord and it's going to be a bass down up. So you're just going to be doing a quick down up after that bass note. Bass down, up. Bass down, up. Bass down, up. Bass down, up. I call this Boom Chucka. You know, if you watched my original video on how to learn the lesson, we did Boom Chuck.

Boom Chuck. Boom Chuck. Boom Chuck. Boom Chuck.

Well, this is going to be Boom Chucka.

Boom chugga.

Boom chugga.

Boom chugga. Boom chugga.

And all it is is it's the bass note followed by a quick down up.

So it's that really cool, classic kind of like old country style sound that everyone wants to know how to do it. Well, this is how you do it. So if we go through just the first few chords, we've got our A chord and we would hit the open fifth string and then we would do our Chucka, our down up. Then we would come up to the sixth string open chucka. And then we'd have.

Those four notes afterwards. So instead of just going.

We're now going to go.

And then we come to our D chord and instead of just going.

We're going to go.

Okay, so you can see on the diagram, we're trying to ignore the bass note we just played. So on the A, trying to skip over and just get the bottom four strings. And on the up strum, I maybe only am getting two or three of the strings. And then on that D, trying ignore the fourth string if I can. And then strum up. All right. And then on the E chord it would be.

And then our B7 chord. Okay, this might be tricky for some of you. Why? It's a little more Intermediate.

So my students ask me all the time, Lauren, how do I go between playing a lead line or a bass line, in this case case, to playing a strumming pattern? So what I want to show you is how you can approach this. And what I would do is just take one chord at a time. So I would take this A chord, okay. And I would just focus on going as slow as you need to that it's smooth, so it's going to be.

Okay. And then I would go back and do that A again.

Now, the great thing about this particular song is that most of the notes after you strum is actually an open string. So that gives you time to release the note and then come back and start playing the individual notes. So watch here on this A chord. So we've got the A.

So at this point, I can release my finger while I'm trying to get those single notes. Okay? And the same on the D and the A chord. When you get to the E chord in the B7, these are also helpful because the first note you have to play on both the e and the B7 is this second fret on the A string. And both of those are held down by the chord, so you're already there. That's great. You don't even have to lift your hand off the chord until after you play that first note. And guess what? The next note after that is an open string. So it works out well on all of these chords. My recommendation would just be go slow, take one chord at a time, and then puzzle piece, Put them all together. So let's go through this first at a slow pace and then a little bit more up to speed to show you guys what it's going to sound like.

1, 2, 3, and 4.

All right, and let's pick it up speed just a little bit more.

1 and 2 and 3 and 4. And.

If you guys enjoyed learning this boom chuck pattern and you want more songs to play along to, then check out my step by step lesson for Folsom Prison Blues, where we learn how to play the song from the beginning to the end. I'll see you guys there.