I Walk The Line Beginner Guitar Lesson - Easy Version

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. Welcome back. In this video we're going to talk about a great classic by Johnny Cash called Walk the Line uses three chords, A, D and E. I'm going to show you briefly how it should sound when we play it and then we're going to get into how to go through the song.

So the strumming pattern we're going to be using in this lesson is what we call call a boom chuck guitar strumming pattern used a lot in old kind of country songs and songs of this time period. And what we're going to be doing is alternating between a bass note and a down strum. So like I said earlier, we have three chords we're working with in this song. We have an E major chord, an A major chord and a D major chord. Most of the song is on E and A. What we're going to be doing is we're going to be playing the lowest bass note of each chord. So for an E major chord that would be the low E string. For an A major chord that would be the A string, fifth string. And for the D chord that would be our D string. Okay, now for doing boom Chuck pattern. For a lot of people they ask me, hey Lauren, you know, how do I know how many strings I'm hitting in this? I would recommend focus on your chord changes first and once you've got those down pat, then we can focus on just the picking hand. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go in for a close up real quick on this picking hand to show you what I'm doing with this boom chuck pattern. Alright, so right now I'm on an E major chord and I'm going to be picking this top string E and then strumming down E strum, E strum, Boom chuck, Boom chuck. Boom Chuck. That's why it's called boom Chuck. Now when I go to an A major chord, I'm going to be hitting the fifth string.

And then the D chord I'm going to be hitting the D string.

Now another cool little alternative you can do to this is doing instead of just doing bass down, bass down, we can do bass down, up, bass down up, bass down up, bass down up, bass down up, bass down up, bass down up, bass down up Or D bass down up.

So again that's just a bass with a down up.

Bass down, up, bass down up, bass down up. Now if you want to keep things super simple, you don't want to have to worry about what strings you're hitting just hit the low strings and then the high strings makes it super simple. But that is the essentials of Boom Chuck. So let's go over our chord progression and how we're going to use this strumming pattern in the actual song. So the great thing about Johnny Cash songs and a lot of songs from these era is that the chord progressions are very repetitive. So if I look at my chord chart here, which you can go to my website laurenbatement.com to grab the chord chart, I'll put a link below the video as well. If you go and look at the chord chart here, we have E A, E A. So we're going to do that twice. E major A, E major A. Then we're going to follow that by D major A and then back to EA and that is the entire progression for the song. So it's E A, E A D A, E A. And then you repeat that, go to the next verse. E A E A D A, E A. So let's talk about this strumming pattern and how we can put it over this chord progression here. So we're going to start with the E major chord and we've got Boom Chuck.

And when we count this, when we count this it's 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and boom Chuck. Boom Chuck. Boom Chuck. Boom Chuck A. So you're doing four Boom Chucks per chord. So if we go to the a chord, a, 2, 3, 4 and e. 2, 3, 4 and a. Then D. Keep the ends out for the tires, the bind.

Because you're mine.

I walk the line.

And that is the Boom Chuck pattern that we can use on this song. Now if you want to use the down up.

That'S what it will sound like.

Adds a little bit more spice to it, makes it cool. It's used a lot in kind of like the these older country type songs that Boom Chuck pattern. Hope you enjoyed this fun simple lesson. Make sure to like and subscribe if you haven't already. And if you want to give a donation, feel free. I'll see you guys in the next lesson video.