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You Never Can Tell: Introduction

In this tutorial I’m gonna teach you how to play the classic rock ‘n’ roll song “You Never Can Tell”, as made famous by Chuck Berry. Chuck Berry is one of the most legendary guitar players of all time and his playing, performing, and songwriting has influenced generations of rock musicians.

This song contains all the classic Chuck Berry elements like the guitar intro and the classic Chuck Berry rhythm pattern.

The piano is doing most of the riffin’ throughout the song, so that frees up the guitar player to lay down some solid rhythm guitar, do some classic Chuck Berry moves on stage, and sing. The whole song is based on just two chords, so all this together means that the guitar part is very simple and can be played by players on most levels.

We’re gonna talk about how to get that classic rock ‘n’ roll tone dialed in, how to understand and not get lost in the chord progression, how to play the piano solo on guitar, and much more.

The song is in 4/4 and the quarter note equals 159 bpm, so let’s get to it!

Hi-Fi Phono: Gear & Tone

First let’s talk a little bit about the gear and tone that I’ll be using for this song, but always remember that you can play almost any song on almost any piece of gear. It’s ultimately all in how you dial whatever gear you have, and how you play.

I’ll be using my Gibson 335 on the bridge pickup to play this song, and I’ll be running it through a modeled Fender amp with the volume kept low so it doesn’t break up very much. You want your tone to be bright, clean and punchy for this song! So add some extra treble and keep the gain low if you can. Obviously if you’re playing with a loud drummer and you only have that one amp, you’ll have to take what you can get tone-wise, but it’s definitely something to keep in mind.

Other than that I have quite a bit of reverb in my tone, as you can hear in the intro. I’m using a separate Fender spring reverb unit with the mix set to 10 o’clock, the decay set to 8 o’clock, and the tone set to 12 o’clock.

In this lesson I’m gonna show you how to play the intro of this song. This is probably the hardest part of the song, so don’t worry if you can’t get it, cause you can still play all the rest! It’s based on the classic 6th intervals, and will serve as the count in for the band when you play this song live.

Although this is an old school rock ‘n’ roll song, it’s not following the typical 12 bar form. It’s just going back and forth between the I and the V chord, and it can be a little confusing if you’re not very familiar with the song.

So the best way to learn it is to get comfortable with the lyrics and the melody and sing that in your head, even if you or someone else is soloing.

In the previous lesson you learned the basic progression and we played it with simple power chords. Now I’m gonna show you the classic Chuck Berry rhythm guitar part and how to apply it to this progression.

Some people call this riff the “boogie pattern” or the “classic blues riff”, and since it’s so widely associated with Chuck Berry it bears his name as well.

After four verses they go to a piano solo that’s based on the catchy melody. In this lesson I’ll show you how to play this melody on guitar and also how to solo over this song.

The unique thing about this part is that it isn’t based on the blues scale, but on a regular major scale. That is a cool thing to keep in mind, if you keep soloing past the melody that I’m gonna show you in this lesson.

If you keep soloing beyond that, you can always go to your blues scale to create some extra tension. But it’s really hip to start out with this melody and riff on that beforehand.

On the record the track fades in the beginning of the second piano solo, but when you play this song live you’ll need to know how to end it- so that’s what I’m gonna show you in this lesson.

It’s very common to “tag” the last line, which means to repeat it. Most often it’s repeated or “tagged” 3 times and then it goes to a standard ending.

The timing and the phrasing or this ending riff are the most important elements in this ending, so the notes are completely interchangeable. I’ll show you one of the most basic ways to play the notes.

Now it’s time to play through this whole song up to speed with the band. Even some experienced players find this song a challenge to play because of the seemingly never ending stream of downstrokes. But use some of the tricks that I showed you earlier, hang in there and have some fun with it!

I hope you’ve had a blast playing this classic song. Regardless of what level you’re at as a guitar player this song is a ton of fun to play and there’s plenty of challenges for anyone. So get to work on your eighth-note stamina, your rock ‘n’ roll tone, and your stage moves! Thanks for watching and I’ll see you around.

Now that you’ve had the chance to play the song through with me a couple times or so, it’s time for you to take over and be sole performer! All the guitar audio is muted in this video so that you can jam along with the “band”.