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Calum Farquhar - Desktop Publishing Assessment 1

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Seventh Heaven For some, six strings just don’t seem to be enough. Extended range guitars such as 7 and 8 string guitars are selling more now than ever before ... but what has caused this sudden burst of popularity?
Transcript

Seventh Heaven

For some, six strings just don’t seem to be enough. Extended range guitars such as 7 and 8 string

guitars are selling more now than ever before ... but what has caused this sudden burst of popularity?

For many guitarists, mastering the six strings takes years and years of blood, sweat and (mostly manly) tears. Some would say that adding extra strings would be insane and some would say that it’s pointless. For many undergroung bands, however, 7 and 8 string guitars have opened up new creative avenues that have broadened their musical spectrum. From Jazz to Metal to Classical, extended range guitars are becoming a more com-mon sight within the music scene.

The first seven string guitars ap-peared in the early 19th centuary when French Guitarist Napole-on Coste started writing pieces specifically with a seven stringed guitar in mind. Although there are some acoustic seven string guitars, the set-up is most commonly seen in electric guitars. The very first production seven string electric guitar appeared in the early 1980s: The Ibanez UV7 which was made famous by vistuso Steve Vai.The use of seven string guitars became prominent in popular music when Korn released their debut album in 1994. Realising the

new found low endcapabilites in addition of a seven string, Korn helped create the notorious genre of ‘Nu-Metal’ which dominated the rock/metal scene in the late 90s and early 00s.

Because of it’s assosiation with Nu-metal, many guitar players shunned the seven string due to it’s stigma status. However, Under-ground bands such as Meshuggah and Deftones were taking the seven string in a completely new direction. Combining polyrhyth-mic drumming and stacatto-style riffing, Meshuggah took the seven string into progresssive territory while Deftones unique chord voic-ings and massive sounscapes took the guitar into more alternative territory.

Although remaining prominantly underground, Meshuggah’s influ-ence on the music scene has been unprecedented. From the late ‘00s, their has been an explosion of gui-tarists using extended range gui-tars in the progressive genre. One such guitarist is Misha Mansoor of Periphery who helped popularise

the term ‘Djent’ which describes a mid-range metallic tone achieved prominately with extended range guitars. The term ‘Djent’ has now been used to catagorize bands who have those staccto/progressive riffs similar to that of Meshuggah as well as other Progressive bands.

The most common tuning of a seven string is B standard al-though, like every stringed instru-ment, their are alternative tunings that give the instrument a ound and different chord voic-ings: Bands like Periphery, Ani-mals and Leaders and Deftones each have their own ‘signature’ tunings.

With the rise of extended range guitars, modern technology has also become a more prominent el-ement within modern music (not just rock/metal music)

More and more bands are self-producting their music in or-der to refine their style and to also to cancel out the cost of hireing studios, hiring producers etc. This being said however, self producing

Ibanez UV7

is also very time consuming and acquiring the nesssacry equipment to make the recording “Stu-dio-like” can also be very expen-sive.

Websites, such as Soundlcoud and Soundclick, have also contribute to this new scene emerging. These websites have allowed the likes of Misha Mansoor (Periphery) and Acle Kahney (TesseracT) to gain a wider audience as they posted clips and song ideas up online on several music forums. The ideas that both Misha and Acle have posted online have either become fully fledged songs in their re-spected bands or are still being developed.

Many seven and eight string guitar players have also deviated away from the main guitar companies in favour of smaller guitar com-panies. A reason for this could be that the smaller companies allow endless customisation so the guitarist can tweak their guitar to their exact needs as apoosed to be-ing limited by a companies style.

Smaller companies also don’t have an binding contracts to guitarists so they can use other branded gui-tars instead of being restricted to aperticular brand which is usually the case with larger companies who have binding contracts.

Strandberg, Daemoness and Blackmachine are amoung the most popular smaller guitar companies who have developed a reputation because of their high quality instruments and buisness standards. Some guitar players like Misha Mansoor have several customized guitars all tailored for different sounds and tones.

Amp simulators have become incredibly popular with this new movement because they are cost effective and can provide a fairly decent tone if the user is willing to tweak with the settings for a while. Line 6’s POD series have always been the flagship of this particu-lar style of guitar effect. However, within the last 5 years, Fractal Audio’s Axe-Fx have become the most popular amp simulator due to their almost perfect match to real amp and effect tones. Many musicians have been put off by the hefty price tag which is roughly over £2,000. For many homebrew musicians, the Line 6 POD series can provide all they need for their home studio set up.

Periphery

Acle Kahney

It’s not only metal bands that have started to use extended range gui-tars to expand the sonic template of their music.

Jazz and Classical guitarists have also discovered new uses from extended range guitars. Ameri-can Jazz guitarist Howard Allen uses a seven string guitar and has been described as being “the most impressive and creative meber of a new gneration of jazz guitarists” by JazzTimes magazine.

Paul Galbraith is a scottish clas-sical guitarist and he uses mostly 8 String classical guitars . He is known for his unique style of play-ing guitar upright like a Chello.

Likewise, elements from Jazz, Classical and even electronic music have started to creep onto the metal music spectrum. Tosin Abasi of Animals As Leader uses techniques such as fingerpicking, slapping and popping which are most prominantly seen in Classi-cal and Funk music respectively.

Hactavist have combined rap and progressive music although this has been critised as an attempted rebirth of ‘Nu-Metal.’ However, the band have received praise from newspapers such as the

guardian and the times because they tackle important issues such as social inequality and they also attaclk establishments such as gov-ernment and the banking system within their lyrics.

Hacktivist

Tosin Abasi

The future of the extended range guitar is uncertian.

Some critics say that, like most scenes in metal music especially, the trend will die away and be replaced by another scene.

thers say that, becaus eextended range guitars are being imple-mented in different genres and be-cause they offer such a vast sonic template for artists, they say that the extended range guitar could become a permenant staple in the music scene.

More and mor ebands are using extended range guitars are more and more bands and artists are using it to create sounds that were previously unknown and impos-sible until the advent of these new guitars.

But when will it stop? There is already talk of 9 and 10 string

guitars being made by small guitar companies and some bands are actually starting to produce music with these instruments and 12

string guitars have already be-come common place in the likes of acoustic and folk music.

The future is uncertian but it is exciting. Like everything in music, the trend will evolve and blossom creating some memorable and incredible ideas but their will also be some pitfalls.

Bands like Meshuggah and Deftones have been around for years and only time will tell if these new bands will survive as long as the later have.

Fredrik Thordendal

Meshuggah


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