I am not an experienced player or anything, but i am curious about the intro for Steve Vai's "tender surrender". I am not trying to learn the whole song, just the begining part, specifically the part from 0:10 until 0:20. I know the song is too difficult for a non experienced player like me to learn but i am trying to understand octaves and would appreciate some help. Here is the video:

http://www.youtube.com/wa...w74sDWPH7U

What does he do at the begining? It seems to me that he is playing the A string of the 7th fret while muting the D And G strings. It seems that after that he is playing the D string of the 5, 7th and 9th fret while muting the G string. I am probably wrong here but would like some help.

yes he seems to be playing octaves, with some "Little Wing" -esque riffs thrown in there

It is probably transcribed somewhere, but I am not going to even try to analyze what he's doing. Even simple stuff is made more complicated when it is played by him.

but you are generally right about the notes (strings/frets) you're describing, I'm not sure what your question is about octaves

thanks for the reply. Yes my question is about octaves and i was curious as to which strings he is muting. His stuff is very complicated. I was just trying to understand octaves and their use in guitar music

hhhhdmt said:

thanks for the reply. Yes my question is about octaves and i was curious as to which strings he is muting. His stuff is very complicated. I was just trying to understand octaves and their use in guitar music

mostly you need to mute the in-between strings. For example, if you play a D on the 5th string 5th fret, and a D on the 3rd string 7th fret, you need to mute the 4th string.

But if you strum in a way that hits other strings, you need to mute them too. You can mute either with your left or right hand.

He is playing these octaves with his thumb (classic Wes Montgomery jazz style) combined with some fingerpicking.

thanks again. I'll keep practicing until i can perfect it.