In this lesson, we're going to take a little detour and look at some guitar playing that you hear on Chuck Berry records, but it's not played by Chuck Berry. In fact, on a number of his cuts, there's a guy named Matt Murphy, late Matt guitar Murphy. Most Famous from his appearance and the Blues Brothers movie in the 1980s. But really talented blues rhythm and blues guitar player and he played on a number of Chuck Berry's records in the 1960s. And when you listen to songs like the man and the donkey, come on, down the road apiece, you hear a really high, high pitch guitar playing high up on the neck and the key of G. And those fills in the lead lines that you hear are being played by Matt Murphy. So in this lesson, we're going to take a look at at how You can play those kind of films how to get that sound that he gets on those recordings.

And it's really pretty simple. So if you remember, we've got our blue, Xbox and then G. This is our first position blue Xbox. Now the neck of the guitar is such that you can get to G again, by going to the 15th to the 17th fret. I can't make the full barre chord on this guitar, I just don't have enough room with the way it's set up. But here's my fault G, I can also play what's called an F shaped G. And so, all the way up here on the neck, I've got a G, so all the licks that you play here. You can also play here.

And that's all that Matt guitar Murphy is doing on on many of these songs. So anyway, let's start out and take a look at just some of the some of these ideas. I call These fills in the high position blues box. So we got G, and we got high G. That's what I call it districts and pretty, pretty simple. So anyway, here's an example from a tune. Actually, before we do any of that, let's just take a look at this blues box.

Now, if you're playing away up on the neck, he didn't use all the notes in the blues box, he usually only went to the fourth string. So look at this here we start on the 18th fret of the first string 18 1715. Same on the second string 1715 on the third string, can also play that 16th fret in there. And it's our major third and then we have 17th fret of the fourth string. So we got something like this. That is roughly where he's playing.

I plays outside of that does some different things beyond that, but most of these licks Right in there can't go much further up the neck to get that kind of sound. So it's no coincidence that the only time you hear this kind of high pitched, lead playing Phil played is in the key of G. So let's take a look at our first example. This is from the Chuck Berry tune the man and the donkey, which is one of my all time favorites. The words are kind of silly, but it's got some of the Greatest Guitar both Chuck's guitar and then what Matt Murphy's playing fulfills. So here's an example in the man of the donkey one of these fills that he plays high up on the neck one more time. So what I'm doing is starting on the 17th fret of the second string to the 15th fret of the first string, and I'm bending up on the 17th fret, third string.

I'm letting it come down back to the 15th fret here He does all kinds of variations on the same basic click can do it with two bands. hitting that just one time, listen to the song, the man and the donkey and you'll and you'll hear this. Here's another example, please double stops a lot of times and throughout the song, you'll hear stuff like this or something like this, where he's playing that double stop with the pinkie on the 18th fret of the first string ring finger on the 17th fret of the second string of my first finger on the 15th fret. So he's combining the double stops with the single string picking. And almost all these licks are played on the first and second string. So every now and then I'll go to the third, maybe the fourth, but mostly on the first and second.

So that lick there or you can play it like this. And that's what I have tapped out for you. So all kinds of little subtle variations that you can play there. Another example, from the man and the donkey, and this is something that Matt Murphy does throughout the songs, he plays over the second position barre chord. And he does this over the four, which in the key of G is going to be a C chord. And he also does it over the five which is going to be a D. So if we go back to our first position, blue Xbox, here's our C. And here's our D. The D is our five, the CSI four.

So if we go high up on the neck, same, same pattern, same idea. So when he plays over the five, he doesn't play the chord, but he plays this little lick over the five. When the song goes to the five, you know, Chuck sings a verse and he plays that before it goes back to the one which is really cool. One more time. So I could play the same thing down here on the net. Because that's my D bar chord.

And that is my D bar chord all the way up the neck. So anyway, what I'm doing is I've got my first finger planted on the 17th fret first and second strings. And then I'm picking the second string and hammering onto the 19th fret and then getting the first string and then I'm going to wind up on the 19th fret of the third string, which is a D, that's a D, D, D. So that little feeling he does it over the songs or something like that. So listen to the man of the donkey and hear the spills and all those bills he's playing. He's playing right there, up on the neck. Another example this is Example number four comes from the Tim Come on, where Matt Murphy also plays these bills behind Chuck high up on the neck.

And he plays some more complicated stuff. Some of it's kind of hard to hear because of the vocals and everything else going on in the song, but he plays something like this. Something like that kind of quick. Whereas bending up on the 17th fret of the first string, bringing it down, and then pulling off from the 17th to the 15th fret of the first string. Something like that is what I hear going on in the background. That's really kind of cool.

Let's play it very fast. So all these licks and I'm playing high up on the neck, he's playing, just really within the first couple strings and then hi blue, Xbox, g blue Xbox between the 15th fret and the 17th fret. One last example Matt Murphy's fills that ended up in the high blue, Xbox and G from text version a BB King sweet 16, which is still one of my all time favorite Chuck Berry songs. It's just got a nice feel to it. And throughout the 10 Matt Murphy plays really, really neat Phil some of them kind of complex. And he does this one at the start of the song, where he plays like he plays go straight out over the second position, barre chord and G but then he's gonna wind up in that high blues box and play something like this.

So what I'm doing is sliding in on the second string 10th to 12th fret. That's it. Like that, sliding on the second string, this is right over the second position G bar chord 10 1210 The first string, then I'm just going all the way down or up to the 15th fret of the of the first string. So the whole lick. And throughout the tune, he does some other licks, kind of based on that he'll do something like this. And he does this one where he's sliding all the way back, back down the neck.

Listen to that tune, Chuck Berry's version of sweet 16. And you'll you'll hear this. We're going to go to the intro of that song a little bit later, and we'll talk some more about it. But all the films are many of the films he's going to play again in that first position, blue Xbox. So when you listen to some of Chuck Berry's records, and you hear that high, high end, fills going on those high end fills going on in the background. Hey, that's Matt guitar, Murphy, not Chuck Berry playing and B he's playing that stuff in the first position blues box between the 15th and the 17th frets