Learn to play Walk Of Life by Dire Straits on JustinGuitar!
View the full lesson at Walk Of Life by Dire Straits | JustinGuitar
the play-along on the song app includes the B chord! and as I can’t print the easy tabs or import them into an app that allows scrolling, how can I play along?
Hello @csallier and welcome to the community.
I don’t use the App so can’t check.
The basic structure is like a 12-bar rock n roll using A, D and E.
If transposed to a different key that would become E, A, B.
(you don’t need to know the theory behind that so don’t sweat on it).
If that is what the App has then the B chord will appear in the chorus - say at the end of the first line over lyric ‘sweet lovin’ woman’.
Is that correct?
If so, can you change key on the App?
If not, you need to place a capo on fret 7 and play chord shapes that look like A, D and E to match the actual chords of E, A and B.
Does that help?
Cheers 
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interesting thing about this song is that it uses techniques from the beginner blues lesson and the power chord rock lessons. I was struggling with the bluesy technique of it with strumming up and down on 2 strings (just accuracy with hitting only those 2 strings), but if you use the power chord technique taught, where you could essentially strumming all or most of the strings, but only ring out the 2 strings, it makes it much easier. Just lay your first finger across the fretboard to mute out the rest of the strings and strum away.
As far as I can tell Walk of Life has been removed from the Justin Guitar iOS App.
That is a shame because this song really needs the background organ tune to sound good and the App did that.
Anybody know if / why this song was removed from the App?
Any suggestions on other ways to play along with just the background organ sound?
p.s. Yes, the App did show the original EAB chords, but it was quite easy to transpose mentally and play ADE with a capo on the 7th fret
Hi Leo, several songs have been removed from the app due to licencing issues. There are several threads f. ex.:
Songs Missing from App
A lot of app users were concerned about that, but that’s the reason why.
My guitar has less frets than Justin’s. Should I still put the capo on the 7th fret? 8th, 9th and 10th frets are much more narrow compared to Justin’s guitar.
Hi @LeTyrmitte,
Yes, place the capo at the same fret. Notes are the same no matter the number of frets. 12th is still an octave no matter if you have 24 frets or 22 or 18.
I see your two messages got lost. I don’t think that happens very often, so don’t lose confidence in posting! I’ll go look at your other one now. 
The chords here matches the A Major key, but online it says the song is in E Major. Did Justin play it in a different key than the original or am I just mistaken?
Hi Zac,
Justin sometimes teaches a song in a different key than the original so beginner students can play it. I suspect that’s what is going on here - it looks like the B7 chord is required when the song is in E Major. I don’t think that’s been introduced in Grade One.
And - welcome to the community!
Welcome to the community Zac. As @judi says Justin teaches it using the A, D and E shapes so beginner students can play it. To play along with the original simply put a capo on the 7th fret. As you progress through the course you can apply other techniques you learn along the way such as embellishments to fancy it up a bit.
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Really struggling to follow the play along videos, this one in particular. You start with 1 strum, then we get 4 strums (2 in parts). You say you’ll run through again, but talk about timing. “Chord sequence again” - now is 4 strums. There are 2 sections: ADEDEA, then DEDADEDA? Ain’t No Sunshine, you played along with the App, which was so much easier to follow. Overall the course I’m doing is fantastic
HI all.
So I have been doing a lot of stuff lately, and I just started playing with songs.
I feel I am having a really hard time understanding a few things. I am doing rhythm work with a metronome, and I know that a lot of music comes from feel also, but I am not sure where I am going wrong.
Playing walk of life, even just with downstrums with the track I feel like I am on beat and then off beat, I get confused with which part of the beat we are supposed to downstrum, and I know it’s the ‘1’ however, is the 1 the kick drum or the snare?
eg: when I play with walk of life, I follow along to the same time that they strum their first chord, then the drummer comes in with ‘off beat’ high hats, ok that is when my foot is going up and the beat is when my foot is going down, I keep with that for a bit, then the kick drum comes in and I feel like I keeping up but then I sound like I am really off.
I am not really sure how to explain this better than it is, I am hoping that it just more practice on rhythm stuff going slowly and it will come to me, but if we are to be playing along with songs to keep up the motivation and they all sound like this (even three little birds was wack because it’s a reggae beat, which is also off beat) then I feel a little stalled…
Any additional advice would be greatly welcomed 
Hi @bkennedy74
I am a bit confused, are you playing along to the app or are you playing along to a metronome or is it the original recording that you are playing along to?
all of the above lol.
So the biggest part of this message is playing along to the song, I just play it on youtube and try to follow along, even with just downstrums.
I play with a metronome for practice as well most likely it s slower speed, but I am going to play a few songs today and see if it is something that I can see across the board.
I notice on fast songs my foot goes wild lol. Wants to tap tripple time.
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Hi Bret @bkennedy74, I’m a fellow beginner, just starting Grade 3. You may having the same experience as many of us beginners - playing too fast. I’m sure you’ve seen the advice to slow down the song when learning it, and gradually increasing the speed. For me anyway, that means significantly slowing it down - often to half the original speed (or even less!). To me it feels harder to play slower, but I suspect that’s because one has to really learn the intricacies of chord changes and strumming patterns to play slowly. Then, once you’re comfortable playing the song at that (painfully) slow tempo, increase the speed by 5-10 bpm. Play at that speed until you are comfortable, then increase again. If you are using down strums on beat 1, get that down. Then go through that exercise again using a more complicated strumming pattern. Justin has a great strumming lesson in Grade 1 Module 5.
It can be frustrating - a song I’m learning is at 148 bpm…I’ve gotten to 135 bpm after four months. But it’s worth the patience! If I flub something, I’m easily able to jump right in, with the proper timing and in the right place in the song.
Yeah thanks for that. I do slow it down, usually the metronome part is slow, yesterday was the first time playing with the tune.
I guess I still haven’t seen an answer to my question about being confused when the ‘downstrum’ comes in the song. It may seem trivial when just listening to a song cause you can tap your foot or what ever on the beat, seemingly pretty easily, but when you are playing an instrument those things now all seem to build up.
So I guess I want to go back to my initial part of the question.
is the downstrum on kickdrum or the snare of the drums?
I literally just opened up youtube to see if I could work it out. This is what I came up with.
I start tapping my foot at the start of the organ in the song
Then I keep that beat, when the drummer starts hitting the high hats, it is off beat, so technically its the ‘and’ or the movement back from the downstrum.
Then the rhythm for the organ comes in, I am still on my 1 downstrum per beat
Finally the snare drum comes in.
If I have kept the beat, the downstrum I am playing is on the kickdrum, and the upstrum is on the snare ( i understand later he says do a downstrum on both, but that’s not quite where I am yet)
It is here that I guess maybe my ears aren’t attuned correctly to hear the beat and feel me playing, because I feel like I am out of sync, even though I am in time (I just did it with my hands pretending to downstrum, I am gonna try again later to see if I can replicate it)
I know it seems like I might be reading too much into it, but I don’t think I am… Just trying to understand playing with other instruments. I find that i can do it on my own with ‘just a metronome’ and keep a decent beat at a slower pace, at least for a few songs I play, but I also know that when I play faster you are right, I am out of time, and currently with other instruments out of time.
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Oh dear, I just looked at Justin’s lesson on the website. No playthrough at the beginning! I’m sure someone more experienced could explain this better, but here’s my go at it:
Listening to the original song, starting about 12 seconds in, I hear a guitar strumming a single down on the “one” of three measures, with a down on the one and three in the fourth measure:
You can count that as:
DOWN and 2 and 3 and 4 and
DOWN and 2 and 3 and 4 and
DOWN and 2 and 3 and 4 and
DOWN and 2 and DOWN and 4 and
Those hi-hats (or whatever they are!) come on the “ands”. I think this sequence repeats twice. Get this down, keep it up and you’ve got the whole song…just keep going at the same pace! See the section of Justin’s lesson beginning at 5:32 titled Strumming Pattern 1.
Hope that helps, even if just a little.
@bkennedy74 I too did this and came to the same conclusion. I watched the official on YouTube. Started foot tapping at the start of the keyboards and was in time for the first strum of that acoustic guitar.
It took me 5 listens before I could even hear and make out the hi-hat. You’ll have to excuse me as I’m not sure of Justin’s teaching on this but in trying to co-ordinate with the different drum parts I think you’re over thinking this. Maybe take the headphones off if playing with them and use speakers instead.
For what it’s worth, later on the track, I think the snare is on the beat.
Thanks for this. I am not sure abotu the snare, i’ll play with that again.
I did go back to no track though, and played it through slow just downstrums. I did notice that I added in an xtra strum on the change from a to d in the verse. This could very well be where I was tripping up in the live song as well.
I played it a couple of times just the metronome and worked on keeping that timing.
Guess it’s just gonna take time