A Nod to the 7-String Guitar
by Collin Bay

Traditionally, as July is the 7th month, the corresponding issue of Guitar Sessions has been dedicated to the 7-string guitar favored by many jazz guitarists, including our company president- Bill Bay. Due to a noticeable reduction in readership for the month of July in previous years, however, we’ve decided to suspend the practice for the greater good.

Still, it will only be 7/07 once and it would be a shame to let it blow by us entirely, so we’ve decided to include an article on chord voicings by Collin Bay that applies to both 6 and 7-string guitars. For all those who wish to expand their harmonic palettes, I hope you’ll pay special attention to Collins article, “Chord Voicings Using Open Strings”.

Stephen Rekas
Guitar Sessions Editor

There’s an old adage amongst bluegrass guitarists. It goes along the lines of “All the money’s to be made in the first position.”¹ All things considered, this saying holds a lot of truth; notes played with open strings are more resonant and carry more pronounced overtones than fretted notes, and the first position all but requires the use of open strings.

It’s physics; open strings can be very useful—they tend to evoke a different timbre. Incorporating open strings into chords and lines can be a very subtle yet functional not to mention a very “guitaristic” way to give emphasis to notes within a line or chord, effectively giving guitarists of any style more control over arranging and orchestration choices as well as tone issues. Regardless of whether you play a nylon-string or a steel-string guitar, acoustic or electric, nu metal or western swing, this concept will take your playing to a new level.

Pianists are notorious for bashing guitarists, often out of a lack of understanding of the guitar. This leads pianists and other non-guitarists to believe that guitarists can only play in “guitar-friendly keys”. Another common delusion about the guitar is that every key is the same, just played on a different fret. This wasn’t helped by the trend towards closed-position chord voicings and lines that emerged (especially within the jazz and rock idioms) in the middle of the twentieth century. Sure, the guitarists responsible for that trend—Jim Hall for example—were (and are) innovators and excellent musicians; that said, they weren’t necessarily the most ‘guitaristic’ guitarists.

Jim Hall went so far as to put a string damper on the nut of his guitar neck so as to deaden the overtones of open strings and in so doing achieve a more consistent tone between open and fretted notes. Those same twentieth century guitarists were able to play music on the guitar that was previously beyond the scope of what the guitar could play, that’s for sure; however, their work could only be strengthened by playing to the strengths of the instrument.

One of the things I will touch on in this article is how to bring closed voicings that you already know into the 21^st century by incorporating open strings. Thanks to the important innovations from the likes of Jim Hall and company, guitarists are now able to play the most challenging repertoire in almost every style and put their individual stamp on the music as well.

Hopefully this article will provide guitarists with ammo to return fire at guitar critics. Pianists certainly have certain inherent advantages over guitarists due to the nature of their instrument- evenness of tone, for example- but the idea that the guitar is inferior to the piano or that it doesn’t hold its own inherent advantages over the piano is a shibboleth. I encourage every guitarist to embrace the instrument’s natural strengths; don’t be afraid to sound guitaristic! To the guitarded critics, prepare for the next generation of guitar prowess—let the debunking begin!

Let’s start with some examples. First of all, every example I have provided is one of literally limitless possibilities in terms of voicing, fingerings, etc. Use the concepts behind them to create your own examples in every key. While I have included voicings for the 7-string guitar (I tune my low string to an A), the concepts and most of the voicings will work perfectly for 6-stringers as well.

Every guitarist is probably familiar with traditional open voicings such as those found in Example 1. As these chord voicings are some of the most common and most identifiable with the sound of the guitar, they are very important as a foundation. We will revisit these later in the article. Again, open strings give the guitar tonal variations that are simply impossible to achieve on instruments such as the piano. Use them to your advantage!

With Example 2a we see some very common closed voicings. The examples I have provided are from guitaristic keys. Example 2b shows ways to replace fretted notes with open-string tones. Example 2c doubles fretted pitches with open-string pitches—this is a way to bring a specific voice even further into the foreground.

Example 2d shows ways to bring additional diatonic color tones into chords. It’s important to note that sometimes, depending on which color tones you choose to use and which position and fingering you go with, you must adjust the order of notes so as to not lose the fundamental structure of your voicing; sometimes the foundation will remain fretted, sometimes part of the foundation will shift to an open string so that a fretted (or open) color tone can be added. This means that the pitches won’t necessarily be ordered lowest to highest, even though the strings are.

This is something to be aware of, especially when arpeggiating chords. Such a guitaristic quirk can be a huge strength if used in a controlled fashion. When adding diatonic color tones, always explore different position and fingering possibilities; often, more than one fingering solution will sound and feel good. Regardless of position, open strings can be substituted for fretted notes or added in addition to fretted notes. This is huge! In essence, the concept of working more open strings into your playing can be used with chords in every fretboard position (see example 2e).

In Example 3a, we incorporate chromatic passing tones into our voicings. These sound the safest when used within a picking pattern (see Example 3b), although those of you who feel adventurous can play around with finding ways to insert the stacked chord, chromatic passing tones and all, into different musical contexts. Don’t be afraid to let the notes ring into each other in Example 3b; a very cool harp-like effect is produced when they bleed into one another.

Example 3c gives us another common closed-voicing chord, but for a less guitar-friendly key. Notice the difference between our “guitar key” chords and our “non-guitar key” chords; both have equal amounts of color and potential for chromaticism, but the chord tones that are fretted and the chord tones that are open strings often flip-flop, depending on whether the open strings are in the key or outside of it.

By the time you have mastered these concepts, you probably will have found some very interesting chordal things going on orchestrally and harmonically. The chords you come up with likely have sounds ranging from wide-open to dense and clustered; sometimes you will find chords with both of those qualities occurring simultaneously! Often I discover a chord I like, only to hear it used in context by, say, Bill Evans or Keith Jarrett. If you have mastered a handful of these chords, no pianist will have anything on you, orchestrally-speaking. You will have the ability to play chords as interesting and innovative as those played by even the best pianists, and sound like a guitarist at the same time! All of a sudden, you have the ability to play pianistic chords on the guitar, regardless of key, position, harmony, or other factors- in a guitaristic way.

Examples 4a-d show, respectively, our four concepts:

1. Replacing fretted pitches with their open-string equivalent
2. Doubling fretted notes with open strings
3. Adding diatonic color tones and
4. Chromatic passing tones

Each of these concepts can be applied to keys traditionally thought of as less friendly to guitarists than to horn players, pianists or vocalists.

Example 4b makes use of enharmonic spellings to show doubled notes. Again, it’s imperative that you are aware of which chord (and non-chord) tones are voiced with open strings, because they will draw the ear’s attention. If for example, you want the highest pitch to stand out in a chord with fretted notes and open strings and the highest note is fretted, you will want to adjust your picking or plucking to compensate for the variances in tone and dynamics between the open strings and fretted notes so as to emphasize the top note and achieve the desired balance.

Now let’s return to our traditional open guitar voicings. In Example 5, I have demonstrated several ways to spice up the chords from Example 1 using our four concepts. Again, these are just several of many possible ways to apply the concepts; I encourage you to play around with the chords and concepts to find other new voicings and ways to apply them.

I can’t emphasize enough the importance of studying the traditional chord systems, specifically for chord voicings. Having a mastery of chord inversions and substitutions is the foundation for being able to design new open voicings for guitar. I strongly recommend Charles Chapman’s book Drop-2 Concept for Guitar (MB# 98181), Vic Juris’ Modern Chords: Advanced Harmony for Guitar (MB# 20440BCD) from Mel Bay’s Private Lessons series, and William Bay’s Deluxe Chord Encyclopedia (MB# 93283) as well as the Guitar Journals: Chords (MB# 20905). Each of these books will be useful to guitarists looking not only for a chordal foundation, but also as resources for finding chord voicings to apply to our concepts.

For you relatively few 7-string players, the low seventh string can be especially compatible and useful with our concepts. Another source for 7-string players specifically to build a chordal foundation and apply our concepts is Chris Buzzelli’s book Mel Bay’s Complete 7-String Guitar Method (MB# 99988BCD). The only 7-string-specific pitfall to watch out for is muddiness—something that all 7-string guitarists have to be wary of anyway. If a chord voicing sounds too muddy, sometimes the situation can be remedied by arpeggiating the chord; other times it might be best to simply abandon the muddy chord voicing in favor of a new, clearer one.

Now to really blow your mind—if you’re already arpeggiating chords with the concepts applied, there’s no reason you can’t apply these same concepts to single-note lines! When used by the bluegrass and acoustic music worlds, the basic idea behind our four concepts is “crosspicking”. Crosspicking can do for lines the same exact things our four concepts have done for chords. It’s definitely worth checking out. Tommy Flint wrote a great book exploring crosspicking called Mel Bay’s Fingerstyle Crosspicking Solos (MB# 93806BCD), in the Value Line series. Another book, which I haven’t worked through yet myself but takes a very in-depth look at crosspicking, is Mickey Cochran’s Guitar Crosspicking Technique (MB# 97177). I plan to check it out myself as soon as possible.

The hardest (and predictably the most rewarding) part about applying open strings to your lines and chords is that, contrary to what non-guitarists might think, each key and position is not the same as every other key and position. That said, incorporation of open strings is a way to bring out the different characteristics of different keys. In the end, every key is a ‘guitaristic’ key, given a strong application of the open-string concept.

To recap: Substitute fretted notes for open strings. Double open fretted notes with open strings. Add diatonic color tones and/or chromatic passing tones, making use of open strings. Be aware of how open strings can affect tone and dynamics and adjust accordingly. Lastly, I’d like to recommend two excellent examples of these concepts at work. Vic Juris’ recording A Second Look (MB# 09782CD) is one of my favorite recordings of all time. He plays mostly electric guitar in the jazz vein, although he uses nylon and steel-string guitars on this recording as well. Gene Bertoncini, a consummate professional, almost exclusively plays nylon-string acoustic guitar on his DVD The Art of Solo Jazz Guitar (MB# 21145DVD) and provides a first-rate example of our concepts in use.

I hope this article gets your wheels turning. It’s pretty exciting how many possibilities there are with this stuff.

Have fun with it!

Collin Bay.

To learn more about Collin Bay and his music please see his myspace page at: (www.myspace.com/collinbay)

His personal website www.collinbay.com should be up and running by late August or early September 2007.

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About the Author

Collin Bay is continuing a family tradition of excellence in music and writing. Grandson of the late Mel Bay, Collin attended the prestigious Interlochen Arts Academy for high school and is currently finishing the BA/BFA program at New School University in creative writing and guitar performance. He has studied with John Scofield, Vic Juris and John Wunsch, among others.