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 in this practice sheet. Follow the time signature shown beside each section; dots mark the remaining counts in the bar. Tap a bar to hear its chord, or loop the section to practise the changes.
Chord accompaniment only. Follow the section notes for this arrangement’s timing. Songs whose words are public domain →
Verse 1 (E shapes)4/4 · ♩=90
Verse 2 (A shapes)4/4 · ♩=90
Verse 3 (D shapes)4/4 · ♩=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 speed marked here.
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.
Practise each section's chord changes slowly, then play the sheet through at a steady tempo without pausing between sections.
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: Father and Son, 500 Miles, Shallow, The One That Got Away.
These chords across the songbookHow often each chord in I Walk the Line turns up across all 104 songs on this site, and what it most often moves to next. The counts come from the sheet library itself, not from theory.
69bars of this chord across the songbook
11songs 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×.
134bars of this chord across the songbook
24songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 19×.
31bars of this chord across the songbook
10songs use this shape
Most often followed by A7, 4×.
323bars of this chord across the songbook
58songs use this shape
Most often followed by G, 52×.
49bars of this chord across the songbook
15songs use this shape
Most often followed by Dm7, 10×.
509bars of this chord across the songbook
77songs use this shape
Most often followed by D, 89×.