The 7-String Guitar: A Beginner's Guide to Strings, Tunings and the Fretboard
A 7-string guitar is exactly what it sounds like: a regular six-string guitar with one extra, thicker string added below the low E. That one string opens up a deeper range, heavier riffs and fuller chords, but everything you already know (or are about to learn) on a six-string still applies. If you can find your way around a normal guitar, you are most of the way to playing a seven. This guide walks you through the strings, the standard tuning, how the notes are laid out, what the instrument does in a band, and how the alternate tunings change the picture.
Seven Strings and the Standard Tuning
In standard tuning, the seven strings are tuned like this, from the thickest string (the one nearest your face when you hold the guitar) to the thinnest:
B, E, A, D, G, B, E
Look closely and you'll see the last six notes, E A D G B E, are the standard tuning of an ordinary six-string guitar. The 7-string simply adds a low B underneath. So the only truly new thing to learn is that bottom string.
A handy way to remember the whole set is a silly sentence where each word starts with the string's note: Big Elephants And Dogs Grow Big Ears. Say it a few times while plucking each open string, thick to thin, and it will stick.
One thing to notice: you now have two B strings and two E strings. The low B and the high B are the same note name, just far apart in pitch, like the same word sung by a bass singer and a soprano. The distance between two notes with the same name is called an octave.
How the Notes Are Laid Out
The fretboard works the same way on every string. Each fret raises the pitch by a half step, which is the smallest distance in Western music: one fret. Two frets make a whole step.
Take the low B string. Moving up one fret at a time you get B, C, C#, D, D#, and at the 5th fret, E. That E is the same note as the next string played open. This is the pattern that holds most of the guitar together: the note at the 5th fret of one string matches the next thinner string played open. Musicians call this distance a fourth.
That pattern holds between every pair of strings except one. Between the G and B strings the gap is one fret smaller, so the matching note sits at the 4th fret of the G string instead of the 5th. Every guitarist has to learn this quirk, and it's the same on six and seven strings.
The good news for anyone moving from a six-string: because the low B sits a fourth below the E, just like all the other