7 String Guitar or 12 String Guitar - Which Way To Tune It

The guitar software instruction course that you use to learn the positions of all your note names on your bass fretboard is going to be based on how you choose to tune your 7 string guitar or 12 string guitar. Now here is the secret to how to tune your guitar. The guitar chord, scale or arpeggio fingerings that are used for the guitar must adapt to the tuning of the strings. So for your default tuning that you will use for most of your chord rhythms, soloing, licks, improvisation, song writing and whatever that is, will be your core tuning for learning your fretboard. Other tunings can be used for special songs and compositions but you will want a core tuning to learn with.

So simply use the standard Open E tuning for your guitar, whether 7 string guitar or 12 string guitar. To learn about guitar tunings read tuning your guitar.

Now with a 7 string guitar because we have an extra string, the most common tuning is to tune your new lowest string to B. So thing of your 6 string guitar in its standard tuning and then add a lower string before this and make it B.

Yes you can tune the 7 string many other ways, such as having the lowest string tuned to A.

For a 12 string guitar you are simply tuning 2 strings as one in standard tuning. So then you have (E E - A A - D D - G G - B B - E E), which is a 6 string guitar with each string doubled.

Now we come back to what tuning should I use for my guitar? We didn't talk about other tunings here, why? It doesn't matter what you use as long as you are comfortable with using that tuning as your main tuning. It is quite a set back to master your guitar fretboard in one tuning and then to try to redo it all over again for another tuning. That is not very realistic. With our guitar software we use the standard guitar tuning.

For example, the key to learning your guitar fretboard notes and all of your scale patterns, etc. is to have an excellent method of study that you can practice and implement well in your guitar playing. Put it this way, there is no disadvantage to learning your guitar tuned in standard Open E guitar tuning. Also there is no advantage to do otherwise, although most artists using the standard guitar tuning. However, there are many different guitar tunings that are used for the guitar as well, and we do not recommend mastering the guitar fretboard in a different tuning. Learn other tunings if you need to for a specific application. The key to this is a great knowledge of the instrument and fretboard to begin with. Get a great guitar education software program like Guitar Magic Evolution and play the tuning game as an adjunct to your repertoire, not as your goal.

We use a 6 string guitar for our lessons. If you have a 7 string guitar, you will learn all of your 6 string fretboard mastery and it will not be an issue for you to extend your patterns for that extra 7th string. What you will learn and how you will learn it with this 6 string based guitar software program will far outweigh any misdirected determination to "learn a 7 string guitar".

Even with patterns from some other book extended for the 7th string, this program will give you so much insight and knowledge not just into music theory and application, but the fretboard itself that it makes sense to use it for your higher guitar education. If your favorite metal band guitarist uses a 7 string guitar and a specific tuning, that is great, you can easily adapt for specific situations like this, unless of course you want to learn your 7 string guitar in a special non standard way as your default. This again probably is not a great idea.