"Message in a Bottle" by The Police came out in 1979, and Andy Summers' guitar part is a lesson in doing a lot with a clean sound. Instead of chords strummed with distortion, you hear picked arpeggios that ring into each other, with a watery shimmer and a soft echo that make one guitar sound like a small orchestra. It's bright, spacious and drives hard at the same time.
What was used
Summers is widely documented as using an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger and an Echoplex tape delay in that era, with a modified Telecaster and Marshall amps. That's his general late-70s rig, not a confirmed list of what was on for this song, and nobody has published his settings.
The rig below is an approximation: a common way to get close to this sound, not the exact original gear or settings.
Playing it
- Let the notes overlap. Keep your fretting fingers down as long as you can so each note rings under the next.
- Pick evenly. With a clean sound every note's volume is exposed; a compressor helps, but your hand does most of the work.
- Wide, open-sounding shapes with stretched fingerings are part of this sound. Spend time getting them clean rather than fast.
- Lock into the drums. The part is busy, so steady eighth notes matter more than any pedal.