Lauren Bateman breaks down Johnny Cash's "Man in Black" using a capo on the 2nd fret and four chords: G, C, A major, and D7. She teaches two strumming patterns and a country "boom chaka" technique that alternates bass notes on beats 1 and 3, with specific strings for each chord.
Questions this video answers
Capo on the 2nd fret.
G major, C major, A major, and D7 (D can be used in place of D7).
Count: "1, 2 and 3 and 4"; strokes: down, down, up, down, up, down, up.
A bass note on beats 1 and 3 followed by a down-up 'chaka' (bass, chaka, bass, chaka).
Chapters
So I'm doing a Johnny Cash classic called man in Black by none other than the man in black. And this is a song about, I guess, Johnny's appearance and why he always wears black. So you can see here we've got a capo on the second fret of the guitar. I watched a live version of Johnny playing and lo and behold, he has a capo. So for all those people who yell at me that real guitar players don't use capos, Johnny is using one on this song. And it's nice that he's using one because it presents us with some nice easy chords. We have a G chord, we have a C chord, we have an A major chord, and we do have a D7 chord. You could easily just play the D chord if you want to, if you don't know the D7. But once again, so we have G major, C major, A major, and D7.
Now, I'm going to talk about the strumming patterns I hear in the intro, but I'm going to show you a second special strumming pattern that you can use on this song, especially if you're performing by yourself. Because most of us, I don't know, I don't have a bass player behind me to kind of do those alternating bass lines you hear a lot in old school country and kind of Johnny Cash music. So what we're going to do, let's talk about the intro first. It's just a G chord, and I hear two very distinct strumming patterns in this intro. One chord is going to be 1.
2 and 3 and 4. And so that's down, down, up, down, up, down, up. 1, 2 and 3 and 4.
And so let's just try that a couple times without me talking over it.
Okay, so that's the first string pattern. There's six. Second strumming pattern is going to be a little bit more of a syncopated pattern. So it might be tricky for some people, but it's down, down, up, up, down, up.
So it's 1, 2 and, and 4 and. Okay, 1, 2, and, and 4 and down, down, up, up, down, up.
So what happens here is we're going to be doing the first strum, first G chord, the second strumming pattern for the second G chord, and then the same thing again. So it'll sound like this on the intro. One, two, ready? And.
So what am I doing?
1, 2, and 3 and 4. And 1, 2 and.
And 4.
And 1, 2 and 3 and 4 and down, down, up.
Okay, so that's what we're doing for the intro. And you can continue this into all the verses for the song if you want to. The first chord, you play one strumming pattern. The second chord, you play the second strumming pattern. Or if you're more of a beginner, just use that first strumming pattern for the entire song. You'll be perfectly fine. But if you want to spice things up a little bit and kind of take it to the next level, we're going to be doing something called a boom chuck strumming pattern. Very common and kind of old style country. Very, very common in Johnny Cash music. More so because you hear that alternating bass line.
You know, you hear all these different, different bass notes.
So we're going to be mimicking that on the guitar. Okay, so let's talk about each chord individually and what we're going to be doing. So the strum is essentially going to be a bass note and then a.
So it's 1, 2 and 3, 4. And 1, 2 and 3, 4.
Okay. And what I'm doing is I'm just picking a couple different bass notes on the one and the three. So you can do the top string and the sixth string. It's easy enough.
See how you hear there's kind of like that alternating bass thing going. So that's what we can do on the G chord. Now the C chord, I would do the fifth string and the fourth string. Okay. So it's bass down, up.
Okay. So you hear the movement in the bass, the A string. I'm going to Recommend you do 5 and then 6.
Okay.
5, 6. 5, 6, 5, 6.
That doesn't sound like classic Johnny Cash. I don't know what does. And then the D7 chord, we're not really going to move around much on that because we only have one bass note. It's the D note.
So you can just kind of hang out on that D note doing this kind of boom chucka pattern. And the reason I call it that is because it's boom chugga, boom chuck A boom chugga, boom chugga, boom chugga, boom chugga, boom chugga, boom chugga. So it's called boom chaka. So we have a bass note and then a down up boom chaka. Okay, so that's our pattern. So if we take this through, let's take it through a verse very, very slowly so that you guys can get the feel for it and apologize.
Because Johnny has a very low voice.
My voice is not that low, but I'm going to do the best I can. We'll go nice and slow to start. All right.
Well, you wonder why I always dress in.
Never see bright colors on my back.
Why does my appearance seem to have a somber tone? There's a reason for the things that I have on.
Had a little brain fart in the middle of that. I was like, where am I seeing that happens to me? I've been playing guitar for over 20 years now. Wow. And sometimes I have brain farts too, in the middle of songs. And I like to leave those mistakes in for you guys to see that I'm human. So obviously that's very slow. This song is a little bit more peppy, so I'm going to play through the next verse a little bit more peppy. If you need to slow me down, use the settings cog. But let's give it a try. One, two. Ready?
And I wear the black leather forehead and down.
Living in the hopeless hungry side of.
Town.
I wear it for the prisoner who wears elongated for his crime but as fair because he's a victim of the times.
So you can see this song gets very, very fast. Very, very peppy. Which is why I encourage you when you're learning this, just go slow. Just work on the boom chaka. And if you can't do alternating strings yet, if you're having a hard time kind of getting that sound to come in, just focus on getting bass notes. Bass, chaka bass, Chuck a bass chaka bass.
It's still going to sound.
Still gonna sound good. It'll sound better.
If you can get the different bass notes to ring through. But if you can' just boom chucka works great. Bass notes, chaka.
It'll still sound good over the song. And maybe you can play that a little bit faster, but just go slow with this. Rewind it. Play through with me as many times as you need. And if you're looking for more Johnny Cash songs to practice this boom chukka pattern on, then I highly recommend you go check out my walk the line lesson right over there.
