# Going from playing 6 string to 7 string



## tronester (Apr 17, 2011)

I've been playing the 6 string guitar for about 18 months now. I have never even picked up a 7 string before. How hard is it to start playing? Are playing open chords more tricky? Any good resources out there?


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## Mordacain (Apr 17, 2011)

tronester said:


> I've been playing the 6 string guitar for about 18 months now. I have never even picked up a 7 string before. How hard is it to start playing? Are playing open chords more tricky? Any good resources out there?



Not hard at all when its tuned normally, its tuned in the same increment as your 4 lowest strings, so you can play pretty much all the same chord shapes you would normally.

Open chords you might want to reformat a bit if you want to incorporate the B in creative way, but its not difficult.

The biggest challenge might be the neck size...certainly was for me but I have less than huge hands.


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## b7string (Apr 19, 2011)

tronester said:


> I've been playing the 6 string guitar for about 18 months now. I have never even picked up a 7 string before. How hard is it to start playing? Are playing open chords more tricky? Any good resources out there?





Mordacain said:


> Not hard at all when its tuned normally, its tuned in the same increment as your 4 lowest strings, so you can play pretty much all the same chord shapes you would normally.
> 
> Open chords you might want to reformat a bit if you want to incorporate the B in creative way, but its not difficult.
> 
> The biggest challenge might be the neck size...certainly was for me but I have less than huge hands.



The most weird thing I found when I switched was that I used to reference the lower strings from the bottom ( the low E ) So I would constantly miss interval jumps and string skips at first because in my head the low B was still the E  But after 2 weeks of solid playing you will feel right at home  As far as the chords go, you can do all your standard chords (just don't play the low B) and you actually have more freedom to experiment and play around with the extra string. The strings are sometimes a little closer together than on a 6, but I prefer the string spacing on my 7, feels faster. I dunno its subjective for everyone but its definitely not that difficult to make the move. And as Mordacain said, because the interval is the same as the bottom 4 strings, you can easily add on to your scales, riffs chords and what-not without too much thought.


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## ghostred7 (Apr 19, 2011)

Was an easy transition for me. I tune "standard" (technically 1/2 step down across the board), but strings 2-7 (low-high) are a standard guitar. Didn't take long at all to get used to that. It's, like already stated, when you try to do full chords from low string it gets a little weird, but easily "learned." I can also say that when I go back to a 6 string now, it feels weird and I have a hard time playing on it due to being used to having the 7th string now.


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## PyramidSmasher (Apr 19, 2011)

I noticed little to no difference really. Any trouble I ran into was cleared up by the end of the same day (Such as playing fast dropped chug parts on the E and A string while not hitting the B)


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## Lankles (Apr 20, 2011)

When I got my first 7, the first thing I did was learn to play all my favourite 6-string songs on it. Gave me lots of good practice at getting used to the idea of an extra low string.


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## Darknut (Apr 20, 2011)

When I sweep on seven strings I almost want to paint the lowest string green or something lol. When I do a 5 string sweep i always want to go down to the second to lowest string, but with the 7th being there it messes me up and makes me skip the A string and hit the E string instead. Other than sweeps it really isn't that much of an issue for me, and I'm sure if i bought one id get used to it.


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## pstol (Apr 21, 2011)

Darknut said:


> When I sweep on seven strings I almost want to paint the lowest string green or something lol. When I do a 5 string sweep i always want to go down to the second to lowest string, but with the 7th being there it messes me up and makes me skip the A string and hit the E string instead. Other than sweeps it really isn't that much of an issue for me, and I'm sure if i bought one id get used to it.



Sweeps were surprisingly easy after playing a few days on a 7, even 5 and 6-string sweeps. Once you get past that initial cloudy "wait where the fuck is my hand at now?" phase it's pretty easy.


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## BIGRIGG (Apr 22, 2011)

As much trouble as it may seem at first to "learn" the seven string, I found it well worth the extra "ease" it gave the 6 string when going back to it. It makes your six string feel like a child's toy, like you suddenly have huge long Gilbert Godzilla type fingers and hands and you just own the six string compared to before you played the seven. Don't fear the unkown!


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## abadonae (Apr 23, 2011)

Hey man,

I've been playing guitar for about 9 years now and playing 7's for about 3 of them, tbh i've got really tiny hands which i thought would make it difficult to use the extra width with but now i can honestly say that i am exclusively a 7 string player. 6 Strings just feel so small and wierd when i pick them up now and im much more at home on a 7.

It took me maybe 3-4 days to properly adapt to having that extra string but as soon as i did i realised it was the best choice i'd ever made haha,

It might be odd at first but its worth perservering and getting it down, you wont regret it at all


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## Herrick (Apr 29, 2011)

Open chords aren't any more difficult, methinks. It'll be like how you learned to play 4-string chords without hitting the 5th or 6th string etc. I also used Lankles approach. It really helped me get used to the 7th string, even though the songs didn't require it. Then I started playing songs that were downtuned and the real fun began


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## stuglue (May 1, 2011)

The problem I have is when reading music or tab. I often find that I'm on the wrong string and get them mixed up in the "heat of the moment ",ill get used to it in time


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