A tip for jazzers using ERGs (Extended Range Guitars)

[EightString]

Personally, in a jazz context, I'm quite fond of drop-2 and drop-3 7th chord shapes (and their extensions) as my bread-and-butter foundation for comping. I'm probably not alone there.

For ensemble work, I keep it simple, and often will even leave off playing the root, playing triads instead, just to keep things from getting muddy.

However, when I play solo, I like to thicken things up by moving the root of my chords (and ONLY the root) down an octave, taking advantage of my 7th and 8th strings in a musical way.

Typically, 7 or 8 string guitars are tuned with a low B or a low B and low F#, respectively.

However, if you play a 7, try tuning your low B down a step to an A, and if you play an 8, try tuning your low B down to an A, and your F# down to an E.

All your drop-2 and drop-3 shapes, where the triads are on the B, G, and D strings, will work almost "as-is", but now you can freely choose to play the root on the original A/E strings, or the new lower A/E strings, without changing the fret of the finger playing the root. To be clear, leave the 5-7-3 or 7-3-5 triads right where they are on the B-G-D strings, and ONLY move the root in order to get this effect.

Of course, if you do scalar work at all with the lower strings, this will mess things up for you if you forget the new tuning.

However, if like me, you're doing a lot of jazz chording, especially in a solo environment where you don't have a bass and/or piano filling up the bottom, being able to use the same triad shapes (and strings) on the top and just dropping the root down two strings is an easy way to fatten things up, without having to get the muscle memory ingrained for a whole new set of chord shapes.

Ingrained grips are especially important to me as a singer. My vocal performances would suffer if I couldn't play much of the basic jazz chord work on autopilot.


Of course, it was only AFTER I "discovered" this drop tuning through time spent in sheer frustration, that I then found out that Charlie Hunter tunes similarly: E-A-D-A-D-G-B-E.

Me, I like my E (6th) tuned right where it is, so I'm using E-A-E-A-D-G-B-E, but the principle is the same.

Anyway, this may seem obvious to some of you, or useless to those who don't play ERGs, but maybe it will help someone, somewhere...

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Out of curiosity, how did some of the original 7-string jazz guitarists, like Van Eps, tune their gittars?

[mr. beaumont]

Van Eps tuned G D G C F A D pretty often, A E A D G B E down a whole step.

Most jazz seven stringers use a low A. Lenny Breau used a high A string, I believe.

I like that Charlie Hunter tuning...if I were to try an 8 string, that would seem very logical to me...

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Originally Posted by mr. beaumont

Van Eps tuned G D G C F A D pretty often, A E A D G B E down a whole step.

Most jazz seven stringers use a low A. Lenny Breau used a high A string, I believe.

I like that Charlie Hunter tuning...if I were to try an 8 string, that would seem very logical to me...

Lenny: that's what I heard, and on a nylon string. He had to use fishing line, until La Bella made a string for him.

Speaking hypothetically, if I went to 8 strings, I'd be interested in adding one bass and one treble string. I find the low bass string (say E), just too noodley sounding at a guitar's scale length.

[EightString]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles

Lenny: that's what I heard, and on a nylon string. He had to use fishing line, until La Bella made a string for him.

Speaking hypothetically, if I went to 8 strings, I'd be interested in adding one bass and one treble string. I find the low bass string (say E), just too noodley sounding at a guitar's scale length.

The production 8s aren't quite in Fender bass territory in terms of length, but a typical 8 might have a scale between 27" and 28", which give it some extra tension on those low strings so they don't sound so flubby.

But I will say that my Schecter's 26.5 scale, while certainly breezy to play, is a LITTLE short in regard to those bass notes, so I'm thinking of picking up something with a longer scale in the future.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Do you have any fan-fretted necks, a la Novak?

[EightString]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles

Do you have any fan-fretted necks, a la Novak?

No, but I would really be interested in giving one a try. Might take some finger retraining, but they do seem to solve that pesky scale length problem.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Originally Posted by EightString

No, but I would really be interested in giving one a try. Might take some finger retraining, but they do seem to solve that pesky scale length problem.

Yes, and I think the look is too-cool-for-school, like the 7-string Koll.

[merritt stone]

OP, that's the same tuning that Tosin Abasi uses. Is that where you got the idea, by any chance?

[EightString]

Originally Posted by merritt stone

OP, that's the same tuning that Tosin Abasi uses. Is that where you got the idea, by any chance?

No, I was trying to muddle through with the stock F#-B-E... etc. tuning, and stumbled across the obvious (in hindsight) solution.

[merritt stone]

Originally Posted by EightString

No, I was trying to muddle through with the stock F#-B-E... etc. tuning, and stumbled across the obvious (in hindsight) solution.

Yeah, I'm not attributing the tuning to him, since it's just a drop tuning. But there are so few 8stringers, and even less that use alternate tunings, that I wasn't sure if you had heard of him.

It's a great tuning when it comes to chording, as you suggest, since the 5th and the octave are all right on one fret when you're barring chords.

[jster]

I can't wait to get some more strings. Do you guys have any idea what kind of runs you can do with eight strings tuned in fourths? Do you have any idea?? Honestly, since I started tuning in fourths, I feel like I'm cheating. I was gonna go to seven soon. Now you got me thinking about eight!

EightString, how much are you giving up chord wise if you tune in fourths with eight? I mean you got two extra strings! Can't you find the note somewhere? Since I changed to fourths I have been working 99% of the time on single note stuff, so I don't know what's gonna happen when I get to chords.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

Originally Posted by jster

I can't wait to get some more strings. Do you guys have any idea what kind of runs you can do with eight strings tuned in fourths? Do you have any idea?? Honestly, since I started tuning in fourths, I feel like I'm cheating. I was gonna go to seven soon. Now you got me thinking about eight!

EightString, how much are you giving up chord wise if you tune in fourths with eight? I mean you got two extra strings! Can't you find the note somewhere? Since I changed to fourths I have been working 99% of the time on single note stuff, so I don't know what's gonna happen when I get to chords.

Some of the tunings suggested here add 5ths, too!

[jster]

Originally Posted by BigDaddyLoveHandles

Some of the tunings suggested here add 5ths, too!

Sorry BDLH, I don't follow.

[BigDaddyLoveHandles]

In the first post, 8String suggested using

E-A-E-A-D-G-B-E

(So you get an interval of a fifth between A-E)

and mentions that Charlie Hunter uses

E-A-D-A-D-G-B-E

(So you get an interval of a fifth between A-E and between D-A.)

[jster]

Oh, I followed that, but I wasn't sure what that had to do with the advantages of uniform intervals. Tuning in 4ths it is getting sick how easy it is to visualize the fretboard. Like I say, I feel like I am cheating. I had this little arpeggio riff yesterday and in 2 minutes, I was doing it all over the neck and changing the chord quality on the fly. So sick.

[EightString]

Tuning in all 4ths might be an interesting experiment for me. I'll give it a try.

But after 30+ years of playing (plus the fact that I play a lot of non-jazz styles), I'm pretty comfy with that 3rd interval between the G and B strings. The requisite chord shapes and that fret shift on single note lines are very much embedded in my muscle memory.

[EightString]

Okay, I just took a few minutes to play around with all-4th tuning, and I can absolutely see the advantages here. I could probably "unlearn" that shift, given some time.

Fun stuff.

But my chord work is pretty ingrained at this point, and I do need some mental energy left over for singing.

[SmoothOperator]

I like the way you are exploring alternate tunings. I do the same on my 8-string slide guitar. I however prefer not to extend the range as to have more notes in a tighter interval. IE 2nds and 3rds instead of 4ths and 5ths, it makes voicing chords easier IMO. One thing to do when considering alternate tunings is to write out a scale for the entire fretboard, and look at how the positions line up. I find that there are usually a couple of "sweet" positions for each scale, where all the chords sit nicely, but it is a good idea to see how the chords line up through out the range of the instrument, because those are nice during solos or transitions.

[SmoothOperator]

On thinking about it more, it would be interesting to do.

GCEADGBE

If you look at it GCEA has the same intervals as the top four strings DGBE, so it would be easy to work out the harmonies, not to mention the C major 9 add 6 chord to build on.