Octave fifths?

[ssiowi]

Hi all:

I'm playing Sting's Fortress Around Your Heart and its pretty tough. I have a question about something written on a tab site about the song.

The song opens with four times through of:

e-10-10-10-8-8-5-5-8-8-
B----------------------
G----------------------
D----------------------
A----------------------
E----------------------

At the end of the tab thread, a fellow wrote the following:


"From Dane Petersen: I was checking out the "Fortress Around Your Heart" guitar tab and I was wondering if anyone else noticed or sent a message in regarding the fact that the guitar part in the song is not a single line, but a chord part. It's more like an octave/fifths line. I'm not a guitar player (keyboards) but I have tried out the part (best I can) on guitar, as well as hearing the song a million times. I was curious - is the transcriber aware of this?"

Will someone please explain the "octave/fifths"? Playing that riff along the high E alone sounds real thin and incomplete.

Help and thanks from Portland!

[GuitarGuillermo]

ok. I havent heard the song, but heres what the keyboard guy means. The tabber has the melody (the top note of each chord) tabbed out. this is the easiest part of the song to hear, so its not surprising that he got that and missed the rest. But the song is supposed to have a thicker sound. what the keyboard guy is saying is that there are octave and/or fifth notes being played along with the note he has tabbed out. now, a root plus a fifth, with or without an octave, is what is commonly known as a "power chord" to guitar players, and its probably what he means. to do the power chord on the top three strings, use your third finger or your pinky to bar the top two strings at the fret indicated by the tab. then put your first finger on the third string three frets lower then the pinky. (not two fretls lower, as you would do if you were playing on the bottom strings) this will give you a three-string power chord with the octave note as the melody. this is the most common form of power chord, and the most likely susect for what is supposed to be in the song.

[ssiowi]

U da stuff, GG. That's much nicer sounding and clearly Sting's intention.

Tig Bhanks from Portland,

DMT