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The Police

6 guitar songs · Tabs, Lessons & Tone Guide Rock

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Band Overview

History and Guitar Legacy

The Police emerged from London in 1977, blending punk energy with reggae rhythms, New Wave sophistication, and jazz-influenced harmony. The trio of Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers released five studio albums between 1978 and 1983 before disbanding at peak fame. For guitarists, The Police demonstrate how a single player fills enormous sonic space through texture, rhythmic invention, and effects rather than volume or distortion, an approach decades ahead of its time.

Playing Style and Techniques

Andy Summers built his distinctive style around open-voiced chords, add9 and sus2 voicings, and arpeggiated patterns rather than power chords or blues-based riffs. His masterful use of chorus and delay creates shimmering, atmospheric soundscapes. Reggae-influenced upstroke rhythms interlock precisely with Copeland's syncopated drumming. Summers rarely uses standard barre chords; his voicings spread across four or five strings with unusual intervals, creating the instantly recognizable character of songs like Every Breath You Take and Message In A Bottle.

Why Guitarists Study The Police

Learning The Police develops rhythm guitar skills, creative chord voicing, and thoughtful effects usage. Summers proves a single guitarist can sound orchestral by thinking beyond pentatonic patterns. The catalog teaches how to create texture and atmosphere without traditional distortion or speed. Songs like Roxanne introduce reggae ghost-note muting and upstroke accents. Advanced pieces like Synchronicity II demand aggressive alternate picking and tight palm-muted riffs alongside Summers' chorus-drenched arpeggios, requiring precision and discipline.

Difficulty and Learning Path

The Police catalog is accessible yet deeply challenging for intermediate guitarists. Basic chord strumming works for Roxanne, but capturing authentic feel requires understanding reggae rhythm and restraint. Advanced tracks demand tight palm-muted riffs and unusual chord shapes. Difficulty stems not from raw speed but from rhythmic precision, unconventional voicings, and knowing when to leave space. Working through The Police songs develops technical skill, creative musicality, and understanding of how effects and dynamics define a guitar voice.

What Makes The Police Essential for Guitar Players

  • Andy Summers' signature use of add9 and sus2 chord voicings, like the iconic Aadd9–Dadd9–Eadd9 progression in "Every Breath You Take", is essential vocabulary for any guitarist wanting to move beyond standard barre chord shapes. These open voicings ring with harmonic richness that standard major or minor chords simply can't achieve.
  • Reggae-influenced upstroke strumming with precise muting is central to songs like "Roxanne" and "Can't Stand Losing You." The technique requires your fretting hand to release pressure between strums to create percussive ghost notes, while your picking hand maintains a steady upstroke pattern on the off-beats. It's harder than it sounds to keep this groove tight at tempo.
  • Summers' arpeggiated picking patterns, especially in "Message In A Bottle", combine open strings with fretted notes across multiple strings, demanding clean alternate picking and accurate left-hand finger placement. The intro riff moves through Cadd9–Aadd9–Badd9–F#add9 shapes at speed, making it an excellent exercise in shifting extended chord grips.
  • The interplay between clean arpeggios and overdriven power-chord sections within the same song is a hallmark of later Police tracks like "Synchronicity II." Guitarists need to manage gain-staging, switching between a clean, chorus-effected tone and a gritty, palm-muted crunch, often within just a few bars.
  • Summers frequently uses hybrid picking and fingerstyle techniques to articulate individual notes within chord shapes, rather than flat-picking every string. This allows him to emphasize specific intervals within a voicing and adds a dynamic, almost pianistic quality to his rhythm parts that flat-picking alone can't replicate.

Did You Know?

Andy Summers was significantly older than his bandmates, he was already a seasoned session guitarist in his mid-30s when The Police formed, having previously played with acts like The Animals and Soft Machine. His jazz and classical training directly influenced the sophisticated chord voicings that defined the band's sound.

The legendary arpeggiated riff in "Every Breath You Take" was initially much more complex. Summers has said he stripped away layers of harmony to arrive at the deceptively simple pattern, proving that what you choose NOT to play is just as important as what you do.

Summers' use of the Electro-Harmonix Memory Man analog delay was so integral to the band's sound that several Police songs were essentially written around the rhythmic patterns created by the delay repeats interacting with his picking pattern.

For "Message In A Bottle," Summers tuned his high E string down slightly and used a capo-free approach to get those ringing add9 voicings. The shapes are moveable, making this riff a gateway to understanding how a single chord grip can generate an entire song's harmonic movement.

Despite being one of the biggest bands of the early '80s, Summers rarely used heavy distortion on record. Most of his "driven" tones came from a slightly overdriven amp with compression, proving you don't need a wall of gain to sound powerful in a rock context.

Andy Summers recorded much of "Synchronicity" using a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus amp for clean tones and a Marshall for overdriven sections, sometimes blending both simultaneously through a stereo rig to create the wide, spacious guitar sound heard on the album.

Summers has cited jazz guitarists Robert Fripp, Wes Montgomery, and classical composer Béla Bartók as bigger influences than any rock guitarist, which explains why Police guitar parts feel so harmonically different from their new wave and post-punk contemporaries.

Essential Albums for Guitarists

Reggatta de Blanc album cover
Reggatta de Blanc 1979

This is the album where Andy Summers' style fully crystallized. "Message In A Bottle" is an essential lesson in arpeggiated add9 chord movement and alternate picking at tempo, while "Walking on the Moon" teaches you atmospheric, delay-driven minimalism and reggae feel. The whole record balances punk energy with rhythmic sophistication, perfect for building both your technique and your sense of groove.

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Synchronicity album cover
Synchronicity 1983

The Police's final and most ambitious album is a guitar tone playground. "Every Breath You Take" is a must-learn arpeggiation exercise that sounds simple but demands flawless consistency and touch. "Synchronicity II" shifts into aggressive alternate-picked riffs with heavy palm-muting, teaching you dynamic contrast within a single song. The album showcases Summers at his most effects-savvy, making it ideal for guitarists exploring chorus, delay, and compression.

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Ghost in the Machine album cover
Ghost in the Machine 1981

Often overlooked, this album features some of Summers' most creative layered guitar work. "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" blends pop accessibility with intricate clean-tone rhythm playing, while "Spirits in the Material World" uses tight, syncopated chord stabs that demand precise muting technique. It's a great album for intermediate players looking to develop their rhythm guitar independence and dynamic control.

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Tone & Gear

Guitar

Andy Summers is most closely associated with a 1961 Fender Telecaster Custom, a one-pickup Tele that he modified extensively over the years, adding a Gibson humbucker in the neck position alongside the original Telecaster single-coil bridge pickup. This hybrid configuration gave him access to both bright, cutting Tele twang and warmer, fuller neck tones, which he'd blend or switch between depending on the song. He also used a Fender Stratocaster on certain tracks and a Gibson ES-335 for jazzier tones in the studio.

Amp

Summers relied heavily on a Roland JC-120 Jazz Chorus for pristine clean tones, its built-in stereo chorus effect became a defining element of The Police's guitar sound. For overdriven tones, he used Marshall combos and heads, typically a JCM800 or earlier models driven just past breakup rather than into full saturation. In the studio, he often ran both amps simultaneously in stereo, panning the clean Roland to one side and the slightly crunchy Marshall to the other for a massive, wide guitar image.

Pickups

The modified '61 Telecaster featured a stock Fender single-coil in the bridge position for bright, articulate tones with plenty of pick attack, paired with a Gibson PAF-style humbucker in the neck for warmer, rounder sounds. This combination was unusual for the era and gave Summers tremendous tonal versatility, the single-coil handled the spiky reggae upstrokes and cutting arpeggios, while the humbucker delivered thicker tones for sustained chords and atmospheric passages. The moderate-output pickups preserved dynamics and responded well to his touch.

Effects & Chain

Effects were absolutely central to Andy Summers' sound. His core chain included an Electro-Harmonix Memory Man analog delay (used for rhythmic slapback and longer atmospheric repeats), an MXR Dynacomp compressor (to even out dynamics and add sustain to clean arpeggios), a chorus effect (often the Roland JC-120's built-in chorus, supplemented by an Electro-Harmonix Clone Theory or Boss CE-1), and an Electro-Harmonix Electric Mistress flanger for swirling, jet-like textures. He also used an MXR Phase 90 on occasion. The signal typically ran into the Roland JC-120 for cleans and a Marshall for grit, sometimes simultaneously. Unlike many rock guitarists, Summers treated his pedalboard as a compositional tool, the effects weren't decoration, they were fundamental to how the parts were conceived.

Recommended Gear

Fender Stratocaster
Guitar

Fender Stratocaster

Andy Summers used the Strat on select Police tracks for its smooth, singing sustain and contoured body comfort during intricate fingerpicking passages. Its versatile pickup switching complemented his hybrid Tele's spiky attack, offering warmer mid-range tones for atmospheric arrangements.

Fender Telecaster
Guitar

Fender Telecaster

Summers' modified 1961 Tele Custom with Gibson humbucker in the neck and Fender single-coil bridge became his signature weapon, delivering both cutting reggae arpeggios and warm, sustained chords that defined The Police's distinctive sonic character.

Gibson ES-335
Guitar

Gibson ES-335

The ES-335's warm, woody tone and semi-hollow body resonance gave Summers jazzier options in the studio, adding sophisticated harmonic depth to Police tracks that required softer, more organic textures beyond the Tele's angular attack.

Marshall JCM800
Amp

Marshall JCM800

Summers pushed the JCM800 just past breakup for crunch rather than full distortion, pairing it in stereo with his clean Roland to create The Police's signature wide, layered guitar image with grit and clarity coexisting.

MXR Phase 90
Pedal

MXR Phase 90

This swirling phaser added jet-like, psychedelic textures to Summers' clean tones, occasionally used to enhance the shimmering, otherworldly quality of Police arrangements without overwhelming their reggae-influenced rhythmic precision.

MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay
Pedal

MXR Carbon Copy Analog Delay

The MXR Carbon Copy's warm analog delay provided rhythmic slapback and lush atmospheric repeats essential to Summers' compositional approach, where effects functioned as fundamental song elements rather than decorative flourishes.

How to Practice The Police on GuitarZone

Every The Police song page on GuitarZone includes a built-in Practice Toolbar. No app to download, no account needed. Open any song, then use the toolbar to slow the video to 0.5× speed, set an A/B loop around the exact riff you're working on, and jump between song sections instantly.

The toolbar appears automatically on every guitar tab, lesson, and cover page. Pick a song below, hit play, and start practicing at your own pace.

Practice Every Breath You Take - Guitar LessonPractice Every Breath You Take - Guitar CoverPractice Message In A Bottle - Guitar Lesson