I spoke with someone recently who claimed that having an eight string guitar is impractical. He claimed that the note dissonance on the lowest string can barely be heard and that ultimately you can only play definitive meshuggah-esque music on the lowest string. Is the note dissonance on the lowest string as inaudible as he claims?

I see the lowest string as a doorway to new opportunities on the fret board. One does not have to sound like Meshuggah when using an eight string guitar imo.

I currently have a seven string guitar (and love it).

note dissonance?

are you sure you don't mean note definition? cuz that would make more sense.

but in any case, that could be solved with the appropriate gauge of strings and a set of pickups that can pick out those notes.

Still though, since the guitar is primarily a mid-focused instrument, having strings that go ever lower will no doubt muddy things up a bit as they get closer to bass guitar territory.

Listen to the new Portal and tell me you can only play Meshuggah riffs on an 8-string. If you can't hear the 8th string, you're playing through the wrong amp. As a lead player I would love to have nearly 5 octaves at my disposal.

you'd probably be looking at a longer-scale instrument for the eighth string's intonation purposes, with a wider neck, so it would be a little harder to play... also, the thicker the string, the less cleanly it seems to play with others (can be solved with near-perfect intonation).

Those aren't big problems though. The problem is having the gear to reproduce those low notes. Your pickups have to be able to pick up the string (so, eight string / wide blade pickups), and your amp has to/should be able to reproduce the note accurately... and your bassist should be able to mirror them, which brings his pitch down into the 20Hz range; so your bassist would possibly need some work done on his amp.

Yeah, note dissonance. It was suggested that it is so low you can barely hear the dissonance between the notes. It was also suggested that you cannot form chords on an eight string using the lowest string as it will just sound all muddled. Personally, I think an eight string would be a great instrument and tool.

I don't think "dissonance" means what you think it means. Dissonance can be heard in any register in which pitch is discernible.




This is true, but that has to do with the wavelengths of notes that low, combined with the fact that it's probably being played with shitloads of gain.

As long as you used open voicings with large intervals between the lower notes, it should sound all right. Certainly much better than a big dense clump of notes.

Listening to Portal makes me think that ONLY Meshuggah should be playing 8-string guitars.

Why, so the world can be convinced that eight-string guitars are useful for a maximum of fifteen minutes, during which you can plagiarise Allan Holdsworth liberally?

Anyway, there's actually a fairly sizable list of eight string players, and their styles differ considerably. Paul Galbraith is a favourite of mine, a classical guitarist. Meanwhile, Charlie Hunter is a fusion guitarist. Of course there's Fredrik Thordendal, and Scott Hull, too.

Stephen Carpenter wants on your list, Natesh.

Yeah, for sure. I actually really like his work. He isn't the most technical, but by god is he ever interesting.

And the guitar should be made of like wood and shit to reintonate the flux capacitor of the fretstock.

aye.

I love my 7, but like gabey said, you need the right gear for a 8. Also, After The Burial's album is pretty good and their is barley any Meshuggah style riffs.

Im sticking with my 7 for now

It's all about the ability of the string to resonate. As mentioned before, the original guitars on Meshuggah's "Nothing" were not fully intonatable to the pitch of a typical 8 string, so there was a lot less full resonance to the sound.

Baritones have solved this issue with 7 strings, and the new breed of 8 strings resonate just fine.

That being said, I need to find a lefty one.

Fuck 8 string guitars, lets fast forward to the future and all play 42 string guitars. Hell, lets just have so may strings that there's no need for frets anymore, every note can have a string! Lets just play fuckin harp guitars!

so much for red stage lights.

harp strings are marked on the octave with red.

Red lights mean no octave (C?) markers.

needs more strings

is there a video of someone playing that? I bet its badass.

http://www.rondomusic.com/intrepidpro828natlh.html



I am planning to get a guitar or two off of here again. I have dealt with them before and they do great work, great customer support, they will set the guitar up to your liking with your kind of strings. They used to have a cool lefty model called the Agile Reaper that got discontiniued that I hear may be having an 8 string comeback.

Oh I just got queasy.


And somewhere, Steve Howe just orgasmed.

Wow! That neck is insane!

Thanks for the link.

The thought of the Living Dead man of Prog orgasming makes me shudder.