You Never Can Tell (Chuck Berry) Guitar Lesson with Backing Tracks + TAB

In this guitar lesson, we learn the intro note for note before working our way up the neck, discovering how these chord shapes can be played anywhere on the fretboard - Practise with Backing Tracks!

You Never Can Tell | TAB

I’ve taken the rhythm from the original recording. Although it isn’t played all the way through, it does appear during the piano solo. However, as a working player, you’ll often end up playing it throughout.

Before we get to the TAB for moving this idea all over the neck, here’s the intro:

Verses

Here’s the first area you need to be able to play. This uses an A-shaped C and an E-shaped G. After the initial hit of three strings, slightly loosen the fretting finger so that when you hit the top two strings — even if the third string is caught — it doesn’t ring.

Once you can play this, move on to the same shapes but one string higher, like this:

Let’s move up the neck and play a G-shaped C and a D-shaped G. Here, we play the 3rd of the C on top, then switch to the 5th — just like playing two versions of a G chord, with and without the 3rd on string 2.

For the D shape, we first play strings 2–4, then 1–3. To be precise, the first chord here is actually a G5, as there’s no 3rd.

Here’s the next area. Now we play an E-shaped C and a C-shaped G:

Next, we do the same thing but one string higher. This turns the G chord into a D shape instead of a C shape. This is not 100% true as they overlap, but I feel its best to call this a D shape.

In the next area, the C chord becomes a D shape and the G chord becomes an A shape.

The final two shapes match the chord names themselves — C and G shapes.

Once you can play all of this TAB, go back to the top of this lesson and play along with the Backing Tracks. Using only a chord chart, can you move through all areas of the neck in an improvised way while maintaining the rhythm?