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Comment by djaychela | Hacker News Reader

Hi.

I've just had a quick look, and I've already found the fretboard.py app useful. I have a 9-string guitar (low C#, F#, B below the usual strings) which I've never really made much use of, and adding a new tuning to the .json file was easy enough, and straight away I can use it to map things out on the fretboard.

When I get some time, I want to look into using this to produce PDF output for worksheets as it'll be a lot quicker than my current workflow for producing scale diagrams for pupils.

Thanks!

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Slightly off topic, but what’s the purpose of anything more than an 8 string? Because at 8 strings, you’re already hitting 2 semitones above the standard bass’ tuning (E standard). At that point, if you want to go lower, why not just use a distorted bass guitar? Maybe I just don’t like the muddiness of the guitar distortion sound of the extremely low notes (bass distortion has a different sound)?

The low notes on guitar simply sound quite different from the low notes on bass, mostly because of the choice of string gauge, scale length, pickup design and amplifiers. Some genres such as progressive metal & djent find those sounds very useful!

For what it's worth, I agree with you, I find the bass frequencies on even standard-range guitars to not be all that useful. In my own music productions, that part of the spectrum belongs almost entirely to the kick drum & bass guitar. However, once you cut out the low-end mud, the rest of the guitar sounds very good!

I originally bought it to use with a loop pedal, so I could play bass, then chords, then solo on top. I've done a tiny bit of that and it's been useful, but I've not really explored it enough to be fully confident all over the neck.

I've played a few gigs with it where I've been swapping between bass and guitar and for that it's been great - tbh the first time I did it I was just doing it to wind up the guitarist I was playing with as he was rather conservative about gear selection, and this was the embodiment of everything he despised!

I bought a stick years ago, but could never get to grips with it (I did a year on it, but was still very basic), and I guess the 9 string filled the gap for that sort of thing, without being unplayable for me... Plus I got it for a steal on gumtree here in the UK as the seller had got so annoyed with no shows he sold it dirt cheap.

Hey, great to see a fellow UK stickist in the wild! My railboard arrived earlier this year. It sure is quite the handful...

I can't say I'm nearly as good as I'd like to be, but I've managed to learn enough to track some basslines and chordal parts.

For anyone new to the Chapman Stick, check out http://stick.com . It is a wonderfully quirky musical instrument.

there are a few reasons. like tiniuclx said, it just sounds different. a downtuned guitar-scale string is going to have a very different tone than a low bass-scale string. like you say, low notes can sound very muddy when distorted. interestingly enough, people usually EQ out most of the low-end frequencies when they play in lower tunings. seems counterintuitive, but it makes for a very interesting sound to my ear.

anyways, the main reason to have extra strings is to have a greater range. if you just want to play very low notes, you can downtune a regular six-string guitar pretty far, you could just get a bass, or you could get a baritone guitar for something in between.

here's an example of a riff that uses almost the entire range of an eight-string guitar: https://youtu.be/v9RIJ4XlUPU?t=66

thanks! I just added 8 string tuning to guitar.json (don't know how I missed it before...)

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