Hi, I'm a newb to the forum and the guitar (although I did play a little 10 years ago). I've managed to get myself a Tanglewood LP Studio copy and have nice 15w marshall amp (with onboard effects).

I've managed to get a few tunes together - "sanctury" - cult, Beautiful day - u2, Satellite of Love etc. etc.

You get the kind of music i'm into.

However, I'm tackling the Police and "message in a bottle". My question to anybody who knows the basic riff is :

do you play the majority of the riff as a barre at the second fret or do you find the strings individually?

I've tried both ways and find barreing (is that a word?) difficult to achieve the right sound. However, whilst picking individually I get the right sound but I find it difficult to maintain the accuracy throughout the whole song (timing is a little poor too).

Grateful for views, advice and some easy but rocking tabs to have a go at.

[Edited on 1/13/2006 by Moderator]

Play the first 4,6,8 with index,ring and pinky or whatever is comfortable for you...let each note ride and dont mute if possiable...play this as if you were playing power chords with the added pinky and dont strum the chords pick them.


E---------------------------------------------------------------------
B---------------------------------------------------------------------
G----------8-----------4----------6---------------------------------
D------6-----------2----------4--------------6-7-------------------
A--4-----------0----------2--------------4--------------------------
E ------------------------------------2--------------------------------



[Edited on 1/12/2006 by Spidercents]

How's the song coming along

E---||----------------------------------||--------------------------------- ------------
B---||-(1)-------4---------------------||--(1)--------2-------------------- ----------
G---||----------------(3)----------4---||---------------------------------- -----------
D---||-(3)-----6-----(1)-------2------||--(3)-----4--------(4)--------6--(4 )/--7--
A---||-(1)--4--------(0)----0---------||--(1)---2----------(3)-----4------- --------
E --||-----------------------------------||-------------------(1)---2-------- ----------

Bar on 4th fret---------------------------Bar on 2nd fret

This may be easier. This is the way I do it. Make sure that you try and hold them for as long as you can.
The two barres will keep you from hurting your fingers on the stretch. The bar enables you to already have the
fingers down where you need it. Don't worry too much about keeping the F# on the 6th string down
as the bass line already takes care of the note. You can either pick the last note or you can slide it over.
You can let go of the 3rd finger at the end and focus on the pinky as it is more important. Experiment
with the last fingering: (2) or (3) will work. I hope this helps.

Jorge Valenciano

|| = bar
(X) = fingers used

I've been trying a couple of ways to play this main riff (and there are some really bad tabs out there. Jorge's suggestion is clever, but I prefer the "spread out" method (as per spidercents' post).

I took a quick trawl through YouTube to see how Andy Summers handled it originally: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeQ2yXE1mpU shows that he plays it almost the same way as spidercents, biut the second chord is rooted on the B on the low E string (i.e., it's:

E---------------------------------------------------
B----------------------------------------------------
G----------8-------------------------6-------------
D------6---------------11-------4-----------6-7--
A--4---------------9----------2----------4--------
E --------------7----------------------2-----------


This is an excellent trainer for getting your fretting hand to deal with widely-spread notes (a cure for any tendency to play with the thumb of your fretting hand wrapped around the neck). It's also good for your picking hand timing.

You can see another performance (from 2007) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6n6zO_FnnIw which shows some more of how Andy plays it. This time they do the song at a cracking tempo (and Andy screws up the playing under the first verse) so don't feel too bad at how tricky it is

Finally: the tempo of the album version is around 145bpm or so: I'd suggest practising at 110 until you have it down and then speeding up by 5 or 10bpm each time until you can nail it at 145.