In this next lesson, we're going to start looking at what's really the foundation of the Chuck Berry song structure, which is the boogie woogie bass or the bogie shuffle bass that you hear in pretty much every Chuck Berry song. It's pretty simple in some ways and other ways it's a little bit complicated because he plays it differently in different songs. So what we're going to do here is just look at the very basic format of this bogie shuffle bass. As I mentioned in the first lesson, Chuck Berry got this idea, the way he got the idea for how to play this on guitar by listening to Boogie Woogie piano players. And when I talk about this bogie shuffle bass, let's start out by taking a look at the tin no particular place to go which is one of Chuck Berry's most famous tins and this is a good one for just learning.

How to play this and teaching your fingers how to play it. Now what we're going to do is go to the key of G, and they're going to play something like this. That is the bogie shuffle rhythm. And what I'm doing here if you take your first position barre chord, and just take away two of the fingers, the second finger and your pinky, and what you're left with is what sometimes people call a power cord like a heavy metal cord. I call it a boogie Boogie quarter Boogie shovel rhythm court. And what we're doing is I've got my first finger still where it was barring the third fret getting mainly this sixth string and the fifth string at the third fret.

And then my ring finger is going to go on the fifth fret of the fourth string. You should hear that and then my pinky is going to go to the seventh fret of the fifth string, this is hard and if your hands are smaller, you're going to I really have to work to be able to do this. I've got big hands seen video of Chuck Berry Look at his hands, the man had enormous hands, which is probably the main reason he was able to play these rhythms so effortlessly, effortlessly, effortlessly. But anyway, what I'm doing here is playing 1212 that's what's called a blues shuffle. Rather, what Chuck Berry did is took that from acoustic blues, and just played it faster. And that's what he's playing for the one chord or the G chord in no particular place to go.

So practice that. Try to get your pinky to be able to do that. Now as we get started into these bogie rhythms, one of the most important parts of this is using your right hand palm to gently mute the strings. You don't want this hear some guys try to play Chuck Berry and they don't If the strings and you get this kind of overrun by the sound, you don't get the chunky rhythm, the the boogie, the soul of it, the funk as they say. So what I'm going to do is gently set my right hand palm on the fifth and the fourth strings and listen to the difference. You don't want to do it.

You don't want that you got it. You just don't want it ringing out and you want it to be cut off muted, and not just listen to that and listen to this. So you're not muting that so much that you don't hear the notes but you're just getting a little bit to take the edge off. And it gives you the ability to control the sound more with your right hand. Play around with it. I know I don't have the camera on my right hand but just, you know, even look up palm muting, and you'll figure this out.

It's pretty easy to do. I do these videos with one cameraman. And that's me. So I can't really move it around. Maybe I'll try to do a right hand lesson before we wrap up here. Anyway, that's the first position.

When the song goes to the floor or the sea, we're going to go to a second position barre chord, and we're just going to play the exact same thing on the fifth and the fourth string with our Pinkie going to the seventh fret of the fourth string, goes back to the wall. Then eventually, in the song, it's a three chord song, he's going to go to a D, played between the fifth and the seventh frets, same barre chord position here, second position C, second position D, fifth fret of the fifth string is a D. So that's a D, and my pinky this time is going to the ninth fret of the fourth string. So let me play the guitar part for the first verse have no particular place to go And then I'm going to show you a variation on this. And I want you to practice both of these and get these down before you go on to the next lesson, which is going to show you all the different variations of this that you can do.

So, no particular place to go. He starts out with this court introduction, which we'll learn later and then he starts out like this 234343 fold. Just like that. So, see if you can learn to do that in the key of G. And one of the common problems you'll run into if it doesn't sound right, your fingers are probably slipping off the frets. They got to be between the fret and the notes that sound out cleanly. Pick them individually, you should be able to hear them clearly.

If not, then look at your fingers and see where they are and adjust them and keep practicing until your fingers will stretch and do this. Like I said before, it takes time. And if you're just starting in the guitar, it really takes time and you will have a lot of pain and suffering and maybe even some bleeding, but it's worth it. Trust me. Okay. Now the other thing I want you to know before we get into some of the variations is how to play that at a different tempo.

The to no particular place to go has the stop times in the first verse. Then during the solos, he just keeps playing, plays it straight through and let me show you what I'm talking about. This is the guitar part for no particular place to go. For the first instrumental break So what I'm doing there instead of interrupting that with the stops, and he does this when he's singing the song instead of doing that, we're just playing straight through what's called a 12 bar blues. So what I would recommend is listen to the song, no particular place to go and see if you can play that along with it and use that 10 to practice. I think it's a lot more fun to practice when you're playing along with something can also be frustrating if you don't sound like what's in the recording.

But don't let that frustrate you. And again, look at your fingers. Make sure they're in the right spot. And just keep practicing and eventually your fingers will obey you and they won't they will not help So much when you do this. In our next lesson, we're going to look at the variations where you can play this on different parts of the neck. And also how you can mix up the approach the right hand approach and make it sound differently played at different speeds, different tempos, and these are all things that Chuck Berry Did you know In all his different songs.