Johnny Cash
I Walk the Line chords
I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash is an intermediate song in F, played with a capo on fret 1. The whole sheet is 7 chords (E, B7, A, E7, D, A7, G) across 3 sections: Verse 1 (E shapes) → Verse 2 (A shapes) → Verse 3 (D shapes). Every shape is an open chord, so nothing here needs barre strength.
By Chiye · Updated
Hardest change in the sheet: A → E7, 3 times.
- Difficulty
- Intermediateno barre needed
- Key
- Fwith a capo on fret 1
- Tuning
- Standard (E A D G B E)low to high
- Chords
- 7all open shapes
- Sections
- 3each with its own progression
Chords in I Walk the Line
Frets read low E to high E, x means leave that string out.
Chord sheet
One chord per bar, four beats to the bar: the shape lands on beat one and the dots mark the beats after it, so you can see where the change falls without any lyrics. Where a section has no strumming pattern written, play one chord per bar. Tap a bar to hear it.
Lyrics are not reproduced for this song: they are still in copyright and this site has no licence to publish them. The chords, structure, strumming and sing-along timing are all here. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse 1 (E shapes)♩=90
Verse 2 (A shapes)♩=90
Verse 3 (D shapes)♩=90
Printable one-page chord chart
How to play I Walk the Line
Capo on fret 1 and the shapes are all easy ones, but this song has a trick that scares people off: every verse starts a fourth lower than the one before, so the same two-bar phrase gets played three times in three different places on the neck. That sounds harder than it is. Each verse is the same idea — tonic, then the dominant seventh, then the fourth chord and back — and once you see the pattern you are really only learning one shape and sliding it around.
Verse one uses E and B7 with A as the fourth chord; verse two repeats the same logic on A and E7 with D; verse three does it again on D and A7 with G. Notice that the chord you end each verse on becomes the chord you start the next one with, which is a built-in cue for where your hand goes next. Play every verse with the boom-chicka-boom thumb pattern and keep the right hand identical throughout — the modulation should be the only thing that changes.
Practise one verse at a time at 70 BPM until each is clean on its own, then join verse one to verse two and listen for that drop of a fourth. The most common mistake is to keep playing the E-shape fingering while the song has moved down, so say the key out loud as you change. Finally, play all three verses without stopping; when the sequence feels like one continuous piece rather than three separate exercises, you have the song.
How to practise I Walk the Line
Four steps computed from this sheet: the order the shapes are easiest to learn in, the changes that really occur in the progressions above, where each chord turns up, and the tempo ladder up to the recorded speed.
Learn the shapes easiest first
E (0-2-2-1-0-0, beginner) → B7 (x-2-1-2-0-2, beginner) → A (x-0-2-2-2-0, beginner) → E7 (0-2-0-1-0-0, beginner) → D (x-x-0-2-3-2, beginner) → A7 (x-0-2-0-2-0, beginner) → G (3-2-0-0-0-3, beginner)
7 of the 7 shapes are open chords, so nothing here needs barre strength yet.
Drill the changes this sheet actually uses
A → E73×D → A73×E → B73×A7 → D2×
These counts come from the progressions on this page, so they are the changes you will actually play, not a generic list of pairs to practise.
Know where each chord turns up
- EVerse 1 (E shapes)
- B7Verse 1 (E shapes)
- AVerse 1 (E shapes), Verse 2 (A shapes)
- E7Verse 2 (A shapes)
- DVerse 2 (A shapes), Verse 3 (D shapes)
- A7Verse 3 (D shapes)
- GVerse 3 (D shapes)
Climb the tempo ladder
This sheet does not list a tempo, so pick one where every change is clean and use the metronome to move up in 4 BPM steps.
Every section here uses the same set of shapes, so there is no section to single out. Whatever you can play once, you can play all the way through.
Playing I Walk the Line with a capo
This sheet is written with a capo on fret 1. Each card shows what you would finger at that capo position so the song still sounds exactly as written. Useful when the shapes above are awkward, or when you want to sing it higher without learning new chords.
No capo
F C7 Bb F7 Eb Bb7 Ab
1 of 7 stay open
Fret 1as written
E B7 A E7 D A7 G
7 of 7 stay open
Fret 2
Eb Bb7 Ab Eb7 C# Ab7 F#
no open shapes left, all barre
Fret 3
D A7 G D7 C G7 F
6 of 7 stay open
Fret 4
C# Ab7 F# C#7 B F#7 E
1 of 7 stay open
Fret 5
C G7 F C7 Bb F7 Eb
3 of 7 stay open
Fret 6
B F#7 E B7 A E7 D
5 of 7 stay open
Fret 7
Bb F7 Eb Bb7 Ab Eb7 C#
no open shapes left, all barre
Working out a different key? The capo calculatordoes the same arithmetic for any chord set.
More songs built on the same chords
If I Walk the Line clicks, these use the closest set of shapes, so the chords you just learned keep working.
More intermediate songs to learn after this one: Hotel California, Hey Jude, Wish You Were Here, The Weight.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in I Walk the Line turns up across all 80 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
64bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by Eadd9, 6×.
10bars of this chord across the songbook
5songs use this shape
Most often followed by E, 3×.
120bars of this chord across the songbook
20songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 24×.
29bars of this chord across the songbook
9songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.
248bars of this chord across the songbook
44songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 40×.
47bars of this chord across the songbook
14songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.
418bars of this chord across the songbook
59songs use this shape
Most often followed by C, 80×.