I Walk The Line Guitar Lesson With FUN Walk Downs!

Hey, guitar enthusiasts, I have a great song here by Johnny Cash that features five chords. Gonna be an A chord, a D chord, an E chord, a G chord, and a B7 chord. Now, if you are not familiar with the B7 chord, which looks like this, the easiest way we're gonna be transferring between B7 and E major. So if you know E major, it's not a huge shift. We actually have a pivot point I want to show you. So you, you're making your E major chord, okay? Your second finger is on the second fret of the A string. You're going to leave that in place. And what you're going to do is lift up the other two fingers, put your first finger down on the first fret of the D string. And then your second finger is going to move down A string. So that's going to be on the G string at the second fret. And then our pinky is going to fill in on the very bottom string at the second fret. Okay? So we have B7, very twangy, bluesy feel or kind of old school country feel. So you may want to practice just going between e major and B7 a few times. Like I said, we do fortunately have this pivot point. So if this is a new chord for you, you can work on just trying to move those other fingers and get them into place with that pivot chord. It only comes in on a couple verses. Because with this song, we're. We're going to be doing something called changing keys, which means we're going to be moving from one family of chords that sounds good together to another family of chords that sounds good together. And I'm going to show you how to play some cool walkdowns at the end to get you in between these sections. But first, let's talk about our strumming pattern.

So we're going to be using what's called a boom chuck type pattern. So I'll show you, if you're more beginner, I want to show you a simple boom chuck. We'll use that E major chord. And what we're going to be doing, the boom is the bass note of the chord. So for this E chord, it's going to be our low E string and it's going to be boom. And then the chuck is going to be the treble notes below. So we're not just strumming through the whole chord, we're doing boom chuck, boom chuck. And these are both played as down picks. So we have a down pick on the bass note. And Then a down strum on the treble.

So it's boom chuck, Boom Chuck.

Kind of that old school country style of strumming.

Okay. Now if I have an A chord, which is a five string chord, we're going to target that A string as best as possible, okay? And if you're not the greatest at targeting strings and you get a couple of the bass strings, that's also okay. But do your best to try and target that A note, that which is the bottom string of the A chord. So here's our boom chuck.

Okay? And then if we have a chord like D, which is a four string chord, we're gonna try and target that fourth string which in this case is an open D.

Okay? So once again we have E. Boom chuck.

Boom chuck. Boom chuck. Boom Chuck.

So that's a very simple way of just getting started with this boom chuck pattern. But a strumming pattern that I teach in my expressive rhythm course is called a boom chucka. Okay?

Boom chucka.

And it's going to be the same thing that we just did. We've got the boom chuck. So we're going to be taking that E chord and we're going to be going boom chuck. But then the ah is going to be an up strum. So it's going to be boom chugga, boom chugga.

Okay, we're already starting to sound a little bit more Johnny Cash like.

It is a little faster.

And then the D chord.

Now when you start moving chord quicker on this strumming pattern, it may be hard again to just target that single note. Do the best you can. If you hit a couple of bass notes, it's still okay.

That'S me hitting two notes.

But if you can hit one.

It'Ll work out very nicely. So it's just basically a bass down, up, Bass down, up, Bass down, up, Bass down, up.

And you can obviously practice getting it up to speed, but that gives you that kind of quintessential Johnny Cash feel. So let's talk about the verses and what we're going to be doing here. So our first verse features that B7 and E chord. So the chords we're using on verse number one are B7, E and A major. Okay. Then when we go to verse two, we're going to be using the E chord, the A chord and the D chord. And if you need to follow along with these notes, they're all on my website, laurenbateman.com then verse three, we're going to be using the A chord, the D chord. And then we have A G chord that comes in just that once. And then we're going to work our way backwards. Verse four, we're going E, A and D. And then verse five, we're back to B seven, E, A. All right, so let's just talk about this first verse. Let's do a little playthrough here. Okay, so we're starting. We've got our nice little intro. Let's talk about the intro actually first. So we have an A chord.

That's going to be 4B, so four boom chakas. Then we have a D chord.

Then we have A, E, B7, and then we have a bunch of E chords. Now, if you go on my website, you're gonna see this thing where there's a bracket that says 2/4. It means for that final E. Johnny Cash does this a lot in his songs. That final E is going to be two beats, so it's only going to be two boom chuckas.

Boom chucka. Boom chucka.

Okay, but the rest of them are four boom chakas. Okay, so if I play through this intro for you, we'll put the chords up on the screen so you can try playing along if you want to. I'll play at a slower speed. This is a fast song. We've got one, two, ready, and A.

To D.

Back to A.

To E.

To B7.

And E.

Again.

Two more times on E3. 1, 2, 3. Now half measure.

Boom chucka. Boom chucka.

And then we start our verse. All right, so that last E is just two boom chuckas. Okay, and then we're going to jump right into the verse, which starts on B7. I keep a close watch on this.

Heart of mine.

I keep my eyes wide open all the time Time.

I keep the end down for the T.

Because you're mine.

I walk the line.

Okay, and this is where the A comes in now. And there is a little walk down there, but I'm going to show you those at the end. I just wanted to go through these verses first. So, second verse, same exact thing, except now we're just playing ea. And then the D chord pops in. So it's the same thing.

I find it very easy to be true I find myself alone when each day is through.

Yes, I'll admit that I'm a fool for you.

Because you're mine I walk alone line.

Okay, and then we change keys again. But that gives you a good feel for what we're doing on these verses. Like I said, the majority of these chords are going to be four boom chakas. But There are a couple spots where they're going to be only two, so watch for that two, four in brackets, because that's going to indicate that we just have two beats. So let's talk about these walk downs and these walk ups. All right, so we have a few walk downs. There's two of them. And I'll just play through the first two. So this is going from E into A.

Okay.

And then we have going from A to D.

And then we have. We're going to be walking back up. We're going to be walking from D to A, which would be.

And then walking from A back up to E.

Okay. So if you listen to the intro of this song, you're going to hear these walk downs too. But we're going to use them in the verses, but just to give you an idea of what they sound like.

Okay, so you can hear that kind of in the intro. I'm not going to go over the intro part here. I'll do a separate lesson and I'll put it up there for you guys. But we're just going to talk about the walk downs and what we're going to have to do is change up our strumming a little bit on some of these transition chords. So where are the transition chord? So let's talk about our first walk down, which is from E to A at the end of verse one. So you'll see we have B7, and then we go to E major and then we have a bunch of A's. All right. And this is our first time where we change keys. So what we're going to do is we're going to walk from an E note to an A note. So we're walking up to the next chord. And what we're going to do, we're going to do two boom chuckas, boom chucka, boom chucka. And then we're just going to strum once. And then we're going to play the walk down, which is going to be open E, second fret on the high E, fourth fret on the high he. And then we're going to strum the A. That's going to. So the timing is going to be 1 and A, 2 and A 3 and 4 and 1 and A 2 and A 3 and A 4. And so let's do that again from the E. So it's going to be.

1 and a 2 and a 3 and 4 and 1 and a 2 and a 3, and a 4 and a.

All right. So you can see it's a way to transition from that E chord into the A chord without it sounding so jarring. Okay, so that is our first walk down. So if I take it from the B7, it's 1, 2, ready M.

Okay, so you hear that throughout the sign. So that's our first walk down and how we approach it. The next one is very similar. This is the end of the second verse now, where we're going from an A chord into a D chord. It's the same exact walk down except everything has been shifted down one string. So it's an open A string because we're starting on an A chord and then it's 2,4 on the A string and then an open D because we're going to be going to our D chord at that point. Okay, so that open E is the start of the D chord. So again, we would go from the.

A boom, chuck a boom, chuck a.

Strum and four and D.

Okay, so one more time. So we got from the A boom.

Chuck a Boom, Chuck A, 3 and.

4 and D.

Okay, so again, if I played that a little more up to speed. One, two. Ready M.

Okay, if you hear there, I kind of flubbed that up just a little bit. I muted one of the strings. Just goes to show you, I still make mistakes too, but it's a great little walk down that you can practice. Now what we're going to do is we're going to reverse the pattern. So on verse three, we're going to be going from D back to A. So we're going to take the walk down. We just did. And we're going to play it backwards. So we're going to start on the D string and then it's going to go 4, 2 on the A string. And then the open note would be the 7 start of your A chord. Okay. So it's going to be D, 2, 3.

Okay. And then the same concept going from A to E. We're going to walk down from that A Note on the fifth string, walk down 4, 2 on the E string and then open E. So it'll be 1, 2, 3.

E.

So a great exercise would be just to work through the walk downs very slowly so that you get familiar with them. So where we would go from E to A, A to D, D to A, A to E sound like this. One, two, read.

Okay, so you're kind of just walking through these bass walk downs and then you can pick up the speed with them.

Okay. And you can see again, this would take time, this would take practice, but it's a good little exercise of throwing in walkdowns into your playing into a song like this. It's very, very common. I mean, think of a song like Lean on Me.

Okay? Same exact walkdown that you just learned in this song with a few extra notes.

All right? But it's the same exact walk down. So see, if you learn a walk down in one song, you can play it in multiple songs. If you really enjoyed this Johnny Cash song, I highly recommend you go check out my hurt lesson right over there. Very great song by Johnny Cash. Has some cool picking, some cool strumming. Go check it out right over there.