In this blog here I will talk about my journey on the new 7 string guitar and share my thoughts, my exercises, my sound settings and new playing techniques which come up with the new opportunities on the 7 strings.

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Here I start with the first experiences I made playing the 7 string guitar. In fact it is the same like the 6 string guitar with just one additional string - the low B-string. But that one confuses your orientation quite a lot because one is used to make the orientation upon the low E-string and not the B-string so you need to build up new visuals on the scales and the chords.

The best step to start is to first just start to play the normal rock chords in the key of Bm and then check out the penatonics in the normal positions 1 and 4 and to add the additional notes. So here are the first examples as a first step to enter the world on the 7 strings.

Bm 7-String Scale Exercise.pdf

The amplifier settings is a 2nd topic since the low B string in fact sounds like a bass and some cabinets make the sound too deep and blury. What I found that when you work with crunch sounds the most transparent sound comes with 2*12 cabinets and also using the Shure SM57 mic.

D minor pentatonic studies

I started to check out how to deal with the pentatonic on the 7 - string guitar. On the normal 6 string guitar the main orientation goes over the regular position 1 of the minor pentatonc and the 4th position is the one which builds the main bridge between the low and the high 1st pentatonic position.

On the 7-string guitar this way of thinking leads to confusion and to the loss of orientation. So I found out that one has to make the main orientation on the 4th position and working out 3 ways of playing the whole pentatonc over 3 octaves which leads to the regular 1st position of the pentatonic.

If you think the 7 - string guitar this way then the confustion stops which you have first when you switch from 6 to 7 strings.

But one of the technical problems is in fact that the position of the picking hand has to be trained a bit since you are used to just have 6 strings and you have to ajust that a bit and that takes some training.

Here now my exercises to practice the D minor pentatonic :

7 - String Studies - D minor Pentatonic.pdf

I am picking up the 7-string journey again. I was tied back because of my injury but I picked up the 7 string guitar again.

How is the best way to approach the 7-string guitar when you are coming from the normal 6-string guitar ? The best is to start in the key of Bm or blues in B because this takes in the open and low B-string and start to build up from there and add the knowledge from the 6 string guitar. The main problem is the orientation because the additional string confused the trained 6 string orientation. I want to share here now 3 chords + the Bm blues scale over 4 ! ocataves. Thats really great.

 

7-string ideas bm.pdf

Here is another " test recording " with the 7 string guitar. A blues with 7 strings and a slightly different tuning. It sounds different than usual. An example of this unconventional tuning - in the 70's there were 2 rock bands in Australia. One was called Rose Tattoo the other AC DC. The 2nd band made their early albums with slightly lower tuned instruments. Otherwise the bands sounded almost identical...

 

Finally I picked up the 7-string guitar again and worked out some stuff which works only with the 7 string guitar. And here's a cool chord progression in the key of E minor. It's a progression which we all played many times : Em / D / C / B7 but now with the power of the 7 strings - a big big wow how these chords have so many deep tones and vibes. And since we are in E Minor I also added the E minor pentatonic to the tabs - sounds really different - for those who own a 7 string guitar. You definitely should check this stuff out.

Cool 7-String Chords in Em.pdf