Seven Strings Over Iowa

Would have been fascinating to hear a little about how the current crop of seven and even eight string guitars that have been popularised by metal musicians grew (or didn't) from this. I know they're different beasts used for different purposes, but that's where my thoughts immediately went.

There's a pile of lovely Brazilian music using seven-string guitars. It's often used as a counterpoint to samba melodies and in the style known as 'choro'.

Yamandu Costa is worth a listen to hear how far a technically brilliant soloist can take the instrument.

Seven string guitars are used extensively in metal (I have two downstairs!), but I don't see a reference to them here; bit disappointed to see such a prominent use ignored.

I can't believe I've been living in the "seven-string capital of the world" for 10 years and didn't even know it.

Missed opportunity: the cult film "Six-String Samurai" set in post-apocalyptic Las Vegas and featuring the Russian-American music of the Red Elvises could have instead been entitled "Seven-String Samurai."

But I don't know whether the Red Elvises ever played a seven-string guitar. And their style wasn't exactly up the lines of old, traditional Russian music.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six-String_Samurai

What I found really interesting is the tuning of this referenced Russian 7 String guitar. By today's standards, that's nothing out the range of a regular 6-string in the common Drop-D tuning (only a whole step lower than "regular" guitar).

Now we're seeing 6-strings tuned to Drop-B (Forth lower) and Drop-A (Fifth lower) in metal genres (And I'm sure even lower).