To many of us the appeal of the 7 string guitar is the extended range most often in the bass register.
The advantages of this extended range are easily heard in solo guitar settings for example chord melody style and also in duet with either a singer or saxophone etc.
Before we begin lets take a quick look at the development of the tuning of the seven string guitar in jazz.
One of the founding fathers of the seven string guitar was jazz guitarist George Van Eps. Van Eps chose to tune his guitar down a whole step making his tuning GDGCFAD. As interest in the seven string guitar started to grow notable players such as Lenny Breau added a high A (above the high E string) while others such as Ron Eschete chose a low B (bellow the low E string). Many jazz guitarist choose to tune the extra string to a Low A. This tuning has many advantages most notably the ease of switching from six to seven due to the extra string being simply an octave bellow the fifth string.
In this series of lessons the seventh string is tuned to a low A. They are intended to be a simple introduction to the exciting new sounds the 7 string guitar has to offer.
With the extra string tuned to a low A the guitar tuning looks like this.
7=A 6=E 5=A 4=D 3=G 2=B 1=E
To help get aquatinted with both reading and hearing the low A string we shall learn the natural notes horizontally along the string. Notice that the notes are following the same fret position and names as the 5th string. Left hand fingerings are bellow the notation to help divide the fingerboard up into easy to play positions positions.
The next step is to learn a one octave C major scale with the tonic on the 7th string. This will introduce the basics of the extended stretches needed when playing the 7th string.
Once this feels comfortable we can add another octave. Here the advantage and comfort of three notes to a string becomes evident.
Now to make a three octave major scale. Just like the example above this scale form produces a scale that has three notes per string with the exception of the 1st string which as you can see has four notes.
The next stave shows the major 7 arpeggio starting on the 7th string. This same shape can be used to create an arpeggio of the iv chord (F Major 7) in the key of C Major.
When playing arpeggios I try when possible to never use the same finger twice in a row with my left hand. This avoids accidentally playing double stops. Because of this the fingering on the 2nd string may seem a little convoluted at first. If this technique is new to you it is worth the extra effort as if can make for cleaner sounding arpeggios.
Finally we will add a C Major 7 chord. You will see that this is nothing more than a garden variety C major 7 chord when its root note is played on the filth string. The only difference physically is that the root is now played on the 7th string. The difference in sound is that the root note C is now one octave lower than usual.
Over the following weeks we will take a look at minor, dominant and diminished scales and their corresponding arpeggios. We will end this series with chord progressions including a walking bass line and apply scales and arpeggios to create improvisations over them.
Please check back next week. There’s so much more to come!
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