I took music theory this previous year in highschool, and they touched on why low pitches in chords sound bad. Its something called overtones, its the frequencies above the "main tone" natural harmonics are a form of them i believe for instruments. But, when you play a chord, all the overtones are almost hidden in the chord, but you hear them. So the higher the pitch, the less overtone, the better sounding. But, if you play a low pitched chord, it will habe too much overtone and sound horrible. I hope i did a good job explaining it, i made the comment before listening to trey completely because i believe we are falking about 2 different things
That's why alot of low tuned guitar songs are primarily riff based and most bands only play the low strings singled out kind of like a bass for choruses with a few added notes or play the higher strings for bigger chord voicings which you will find in alot of monuments songs. You can still get a good sound though with great gear and knowing how to set in tone for low tunings
@@NathanielBTM all the low tune bands I know of play all over. Currents for example use riffs on the low e and high b strings, after the burial is everywhere, archspire uses 8 strings, extra uses riffs with low f sharp notes and high e notes consistently in songs like the hypnotist. Polaris is another band. Your point of view is about as ignorant as it gets cause I feel exactly the opposite. these bands using lower tunings are incorporating notes in higher octaves in their riffs as well as the lowe octave from the low 8 string at the same time in the same riffs. Shokran is another band, all shall perish, vitalism. People need to shut the fuck up with that narrative of people who play super low tunings on use the low strings. It's just absolutely not true. If anything the opposite is true. Take the chorus riff of better days by chorus for example. Look at veil of Maya another great example of a band who plays in f sharp that is all over the fretboard constantly. Please stop with your sheep npc opinion. Youre just as bad as the boomers that never shut the fuck up about feel being more important than speed everytime somebody sweep picks or some shit. Or the dumb fucks who say Buckethead only makes computer sounds or only plays fast. We've all heard it a million times and it's bullshit and ignorant.
Back in the day, before the pregnancies of our significant others put an end to our band, we were downtuned to B (standard tuning of a 7 string) but on a regular 6-sting. When my guitarist bought a 7-string, I told him to keep the sting 7 tuned to B, and tune the rest EXACTLY how he tuned his old guitar. That way there was "double attack" on the B-tuned string sound, which made the entire guitar sound heavier than it really was. It sounded awesome which was great for our stoner doom metal band.
As a 6 string player, the highest I'll ever go is 7 strings. 8 hurts, 9 is just plain crazy and 18 (Jared Dines) is just... *puts on sick shades 😎 Guitarded!*
MichaelD8393 fair enough I get that personally I run a 8 string dean as my main guitar cause the versatility and the style of music i play. though for me 9 strings is bordering on too low and like 10 strings is just like insane and uh jared is jared hes beyond comprehension
"If those drums were any more sampled and quantized, they would become self aware and wipe out all live musicians on the planet!!!" In all seriousness, love his channel.
Erik Duijs Well, the problem is that no major amp manufacturer that I know of makes an amp suited for 8+ string guitars. There are giant sized speakers that handle the frequencies but, not an actual amp
My comment was meant in jest of course (I mean obviously those legs are objectively awesome, lol), but is there really no amp that can do such a guitar justice? Maybe some bass amp could work? To be honest this concept of such 8+ string guitars is kind of new to me. Interesting stuff.
I’m sitting here thinking there’s some material here for a Spinal Tap sketch. Instead of the amp going to 11, the guitar has 11 strings. Marty di Bergi: Why not let the bass player play all the low notes? […long pause…] Nigel Tufnel: This has 11. Nigel Tufnel: The biggest string is so low you can’t even hear it. But you can feel it, right? And if I play this note ‘ere, but I won’t, because it’s the “brown note,” you know what makes your bowels loosen and so forth, so I won’t play it because I don’t want you to, you know, soil yourself. Marty di Bergi: I’m grateful for that.
Yeah. Anything lower than A or B is just dumb. Just play a bass at that point. Plus 8 and 9 string necks are ridiculously wide and way too hard to play
Hi Glenn & Trey! The reason why you can't play chords or intervals and have them sound clean below a certain pitch has a lot less to do with our current tuning system and a lot more with the physics of the sound itself. You probably know what upper harmonics are: each natural sound contains besides its fundamental pitch an entire series of higher pitches. Those and their relative proportion give the sound its tone, its color, its unique timbre. That's why different instruments have different sounds, tones, that's why we can tell a flute from an oboe or even one guitar from another: the relative proportion of these upper harmonics or overtones as they are also called is different. Now the first sixteen of these overtones for a C note would be the following (each higher than the previous one): C, C, G, C, E, G, Bb, C, D, E, F#, G, Ab, Bb, B, C. Some instruments' sounds contain more of some of these, others contain more of others, thus each will have a unique sound. Moreover,the first few harmonics are a lot more noticeable and also the lower the fundamental, the more present these upper harmonics are. As you can notice, the third note in this row is the perfect fifth of the fundamental, in case of C it will be G. If you play a power cord on C, the notes that you play will be C and G, each coming with its own set of upper harmonics. For C the row will begin as C, C, G etc. while for G it will be G, G, D etc. So when you play a power cord on a very low pitch and these upper harmonics are really present in the sound, the notes that sound are actually C, G and D (!!!) also some of the higher harmonics, but these first ones of the entire row are really there. Of course, C and D will be dissonant and that gives that muddy, unpleasant tone. Intervals or chords played on these lowest pitches will sound dirty on any instrument. You can try and play the lowest C+G on a piano, it's no better. But if you move the G an octave higher, it'll clear up a lot, because the fundamental G being higher, its harmonics (D included) will be less present in the mix and therefore it will not crash with the C. Thank you for your great videos, I'm following you for quite some time now and as a Musicologist who is also trying to be a reasonably good sound engineer (I've built a small bedroom studio just to be able to record and mix my own compositions ranging from pre-classical to metal), I've learned loads from you, keep up the good work!
Sounds like a cool idea! it’d be nice to hear the differences with how the strings rattle and tone and such! Id love to see what Glenn can do with this idea.
Yep, I stand by my first impressions... up to 7 Strings guitars sound awesome... 8 and 9 is a big nahh for me and for the way I play guitar. Gotta give major props to Tosin, Fred and others, who actualy make them sound great. Kinda demands to be played piano like. Cheers
I think that drop A on 7 string is the lowest usefull tuning for a guitar. Lower than that and it becomes mushy and undefined. That is what bass is for, to give us powerful low end.
I know I often end up sounding like a Roland rep but I've loved my vg's for decades. The ability to completely tune any way I want with the kick of a pedal is incredible. Never have to get used to a different tension. The low string never goes out of tune because you hit it too hard. Once you're spoiled by the control you get with one of those systems... 😍
It's all about getting the tones right. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-T9cho6hluf0.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CdjtMbzJwR4.html
That's a problem more with the set up they're using than intrinsically a 9 string problem. When you use lower notes, you lose clarity. As such, you need to make adjustments with the amp and pedals to compensate. They didn't do that, so it sounded bad. If they did, it would just sound like a normal guitar but lower.
I see why some heavymetal guitarplayers would like 7 string guitars... Makes sense. What i don't get, is why they would want more than 7 strings ? Are they hearingimpaired to a degree where they can't hear the loss of tone, and the dissonance. - Or is it just a case of the good ol' 'mine's bigger than yours'
because bands like Animals as Leaders and Wide Eyes actually put 8 and 9 string guitars to good use instead of just chugging the low string and thinking that makes you dj0nty as fuck
@@HamsterWheelGaming But even Abasi uses muting and thumping to redact that low end. I think he uses it mainly for the high end advantage. In some videos he even recommends 6 string players to get a 7...why not 8? Because he knows people will abuse that low end and make poopy riffs.
its not the notes that are being played, its the rhythm. like in after the burial's "A Wolf Amongst Ravens" they tuned to drop c# on an 8, and the solo is cool too
As many times as I’ve heard the opening riff ( or closing in this case ) it never gets old. I love that riff ! The Harley Benton 8 string was sick btw .. I’d pick that up for $500. Swap out the pups maybe but that’s about all it might need.
There's something to be said about scale lengths and the rules that apply to them, you can choose not to follow them and not run into too many intonation issues if you know what you're doing. For instance, I think a 6 string guitar with a 25.5 scale tuned in drop A# still sounds great but with or around 54-12 gauge strings, I feel like the heavier string gauge closes the gap a little and accommodates for the shorter scale length up to certain point.
What you were referencing in terms of harmonies at lower registers is called the overtone series. Basically, as you get lower in register, the notes don't ring out as well, making the harmonies resonate with each other and come out muddy. It also works on the other direction with harmonics: the higher the harmonic, the less clear it becomes. All that aside, even played by itself, the low C# sounds awful with distortion. In order for it to sound good, you basically have to treat it like a combination of a bass and guitar. Rob Scallon does this with "Royale" and Tosin Abasi does it with "Physical Education."
You can easily play lower tunings in the A and B range on 25.5" with higher gauge strings, but anything lower than that needs longer scale length, or else the thickness of strings becomes unreasonable.
The actual explanation is that intervals create subharmonics - a 5th creates a subharmonic an octave below the lowest note due to the 3:2 frequency ratio. By playing a 5th that low, you're effectively creating vibrations that are too low for the brain to comprehend because they're near/below the limit of human hearing. More complex intervals create even lower harmonics, which is why the campfire G-major chord sounds so awful if you play the low 3rd and that's without extended range.
Yeah, equal temperament has an effect on the purity of intervals, but it's mainly the subharmonics that cause problems. When put through an amp the subharmonics tend to modulate the audio signal, which really fouls things up. Even with clean acoustic sounds, the human ear gets progressively worse at discerning pitch below about 100 Hz (approx the bottom G of a standard guitar) due to the distribution of the nerve cells picking up the different frequencies, so two notes together below that can be confusing.
Especially with distortion, because the clipped signal emphasises the subharmonic. That's actually why power chords sound so good with distortion, because the guitar basically accompanies itself with a chunky bass note an octave below. But yeah, there's a reason why bass guitars rarely get tuned below A0 or B0. It sounds crap, and so does playing power chords below A1 or B1. I tune my 7-string down to G but I very rarely play that note in conjunction with any other notes in the same octave and our bass player doesn't go below B0.
The undertone series doesn't actually exist in the real world. You can fake a low note by playing it's overtones but it's our brain filling in the gaps, the sound doesn't actually show up on a frequency spectrum or exist in any real way. The undertone series is an interesting compositional tool, but nobody has been able to create it in the real world.
Glenn you are like Statler and Waldorf rolled into one. It keeps me entertained. The other comparison I make is a really aggro Penn Gillette. Either way it works for me.
Jon Borrmann - Exactly. It sounds like utter crap. Unless you are intentionally making music that sounds like crap, there is no use for a 9 string guitar. They are more like props to show off with. I understand how/why someone would use a 7 string...but any more strings than that is just foolish.
Michael R. Animals as leaders did pretty well with 8 strings, but Tosin also came up with his own playstyle which works for those guitars. Maybe not so much for what most of us are looking for haha
Everybody that says what you just said doesn't seem to understand how guitar tones work. It doesn't matter how long you go on a guitar hooked up to a guitar amp. An 8 string guitar is only outputting overtones you're never going to get the fatness of a bass on the same note. listen to Hawkins music they play 8 string guitars and they sound amazing. The lowest the bass goes is drop a but most of the time he's standard 6 bass tuning. Bass is always going to be necessary to fatten the sound.
Grabs the guitar and immediately frets 0-2-2. I just knew Trey would do the unforgivable on a 9-string 😁! You're playing in bass range. Would you play power chords on a bass? Would you use obscene amounts of gain on a bass? The funny thing is that he actually explains why you shouldn't play chords that low right afterwards... but he still did it anyway 😊...
I think Baritone is the standard tuning of a guitar with more strings to than the amount of strings you have. For instance B standard or lower is the baritone tuning for 6 strings, F# standard or lower is the baritone tuning for 7 strings, and so on and so forth...
Hey Glenn check out Mick Gordon and the making of the Doom 2016 soundtrack He uses a Schecter 9 string and its amazing check out the song BFG Dvision not technical by any means but shows that a 9 String can just sound amazing!
On the note of lower chords not working: I've read the frequencies and wavelengths of each note and I think lower chords sound unstable because the frequencies no longer have a common denominator, like a note with a frequency of 17 hertz doesn't have any common denominators with a frequency for 20 hertz
Regarding low interval limits, it has more to do with overtones clashing, due to them being closer together when playing low, rather than equal temperament. The latter plays a partial role but it's not the main reason why chords don't work low. Inharmonicity also affects how low one can go. Octaves are not affected by this limit though. Fifths can be played to somewhere around C1 - Bb1, a low A1 or G1 powerchord can work with long baritone scale lenghts (30 inch), but I recommend not to play the octave as it will clash with the fifth. With brand new high quality strings, top-tier skills, pickups and amplification a low F powerchord can work if you make it work. For everything else than fifths and octaves I recommend there only being one note lower than D3. For seconds it might be even a little bit higher, up to F. It all depends on the strings and instrument though. Square and triangle waves can go a bit lower though because they contain less overtones. Playing ones bass strings closer to the neck, the way steve harris plays them, you not only get an amazing tone for metal but it also reduces the muddyness as it removes a lot of the even harmonics. (if you play right in the middle of the string you only get uneven overtones like a square wave). It certainly helps if you finger through the string it can achieve the clankyness of a pick, but getting less even overtones which make your mix muddy. Longer scale length plus playing stainless steel, fender, Kalium, Kemp or Optima 24k gold strings isd also helpful as those have less inharmonicity than most bass strings. Other things that can help is replacing the sub of your bass with a square reinforced sine wave. I don't recommend using saw waves for that if you play downtuned because they contain more overtones. Lastly using a fuzz which adds uneven overtones on the mids of your bass is also a great tool to get rid of muddyness.
That was a complete metal meltdown guys! 🤘🎸Some of the commentators jumped like a hell patrol to argue that the low Painkiller riff sounded bad, but others are the leatherrebel type and you know they want a touch of evil. As for the rest, they must surely feel like being between the hammer and the anvil. Oh well, who cares, you get a new guitar, you gotta give it at least one shot at glory and play a battle hymn. Also well done for comparing 4 guitars, wow! all guns blazing indeed. I have to go now because it’s almost 2AM and I’m yet again slowly turning into a nightcrawler. I’m fully aware this joke is terrible, a bit like living bad dreams.
Back in the days we tuned our strings to low B. You needed to learn to play guitar from scrats because the strings where very loose on the guitar. We used 0.13 strings.
It's funny thay they complain that its a big stretch on the high e on the 9-string, as if they think the people that buy them will play more than the lowest string
I am into 7 strings, but I am not into the sludgey sound of 8 or 9 string guitars. I did come up with a double drop D tuning, that didn't flub out. I used a Dean Avalanche 7 string with Zakk Wylde strings 13 to 70. I added a .026 to complete the set. I know Messhuggah did some bad ass stuff with those guitars.
What's the point? Nearly everyone I see riffing on 7 or 8 string guitars only use the lowest 4 bloody strings anyway! Most guitarists have a spare guitar lying around so (if you really want to sound like everyone else) just set it up for lower tuning and save yourself the ball ache - sorted!
MrArchie800 Jeff Loomis disagrees. As does Steve Vai, Andy James, and Angel Vivaldi. I definitely agree that anything more than 7 is pointless though. For me anyway.
Thor Thunderlungs. Yes I take your point mate, although I did say 'nearly' everyone - i know there are exceptions, I used to have a Gem 77 back in the day but personally found it cumbersome for lead, which is why I just prefer the feel of a six string tuned down.
yeeeaaah, I'll stick to 6 strings and let the bass player do the bottom end. Of course, I'm not playing sludge, doom, black, grind, norwegian, djent, or any other kind of 'nu-metal'. The "wandering pitch" on the added range strings is just too annoying to listen to for me. Quick question for the guys that do dig that stuff: have yous guys messed around with a fender bass VI? You'll get those low B's, C's, and G's without the floppy pitch warble. Thanks for the demo, Glenn. Your stuff is always worth watching.
Just FYI, none of those genres you listed are a "kind of 'nu-metal." Nu-Metal is a subgenre that peaked in the early 2000's and mixed elements of (then) modern Hip-Hop, Rock, and Electronic into Metal, and the bass guitar is usually pretty prominent in Nu-Metal, meaning the guitarists don't need to play extremely low tunings.
like that matters? you obviously didn't get the joke. you "metal" guys need to stop trying to subdivide genres just because some dude tuned a string down/up/sideways a half step or just because the 17.25 string guitar (that no one can hear the pitch on half the strings) is painted in Vantablack2.0. Lighten up, Francis. No one cares about what 15021 sub genres of metal are called.
You're the only one freaking out here, pops. How'd an old man like you end up on a Metal channel, anyways, if you don't like Metal? Slow day at the retirement home, so you hop on this new internet thing to harass some young people?
I wonder how it would sound if you made like a 12 string guitar for standard six string tuning range, E - E... but multiscale more like a piano so that each string represents 12 frets of range instead of 24. In other words, you have the exact same range as a standard 6 string, but you have twice as many strings with half as much range with a more precise scale length like a piano or harp. So a 12 string, 12 fret multiscale guitar tuned from standard E to high E. You could make the highest pitch string a really short scale. Essentially have like a 12 fret violin scale on the small string.
7:30 Low limit intervals are caused by the harmonic series. The further down in pitch you go on an instrument, the more partials are present in each individual note. Tempered tuning also plays a role, because certain intervals are intrinsically out of tune (even perfect fifths are slightly out of tune.)
The reason intervals start to sound like shit down low is quite simple. The first one is that you're playing through a guitar amp, which wants to live in the midrange, so all you're hearing are the higher harmonics of those stupidly low strings. Harmonics of thick strings _are sharp,_ (look up "inharmonicity" if you like), and this gets worse with thicker strings and lower tension. The second reason is that human pitch recognition is just not as good in the bass range (or the extreme treble) as it is in the heart of the musical range. The third is that low notes vibrate slowly, and it takes a certain number of cycles (usually three or four) to have any chance of locking in on a pitch. I'm not sure you let that low C# ring for long enough to emit four full cycles when you chug, and combined with the second reason, this produces vague pitch definition. A fourth reason would be intermodulation distortion. The harmonics of those low strings lie close together, and when you crank up the gain, they interact with one another in strange ways. Aaron Copland wrote about the uncertainty of bass notes in one of his treatises on orchestration, but I can't seem to find a reference for it now. He was talking about upright bass being played pizzicato, but chugging those low strings gives the ear even less to lock in on.
Hey Glenn. Would you say that Harley Benton 8 string is a good purchase for someone who just wants a more-than-6-string guitar to mess about with? It's way cheaper than its competitors, but does that mean the quality is lacking? Would you put a Harley Benton 8-string on an album? Thanks in advance, C.
I am a six string playing peasant. My eardrums were forged in the steel of 80 Metal and everything lower than open e string is blasphemy to my ears. \m/\m/
Isn't that's like a five piece neck on a Harley Benton? I believe I heard somewhere in a review that all their fan-fret guitars from the DLX range have two additional smaller nato wood strips in between the three thicker maple wood strips.
If I had to throw my wild guess into the hat. There is something about the lower the note the more overtones in our audible range, muddier. However, isn't that also the reason an individual out of tune bass note is more forgiving.
I think I'll stick with 6 and 7 strings, because the lowest I've drop tuned my 6 string while doing covers was drop G# which a 7 can hit with no problem
Cheshire Cynic you'd be surprised. It usually is when I'm transposing songs down a couple of steps, but there are people like Lee Albrecht who use it for metal covers. He did a cover of My Lullaby from Lion King 2 with Jonathan Young and since Jon is a bass, Lee tuned the song down to drop G# and it actually sounds pretty awesome
Well, I am indeed surprised. I assumed you were talking about covering a band that just uses drop-G# to "out-heavy" everyone else, when drop-A is an easy, comfortable tuning (considering it's basically drop-D transposed down half an octave), and is more than heavy enough to get the point across for bands like Nile, Suicide Silence, etc. Transposing things that weren't meant to be Metal makes so much more sense.
What he said about equal temprament isn't quite right. Equal temprament does make some intervals "wrong" sounding, but the fifth is not one of them, and lower pitches have nothing to do with that. The reason lower pitches can't do chords is because the frequency ratios are much more obvious to our ears because of how slow they are and how many obvious overtones they have. It's different for everyone, but there's a point somewhere between a low G-Bb on a 7-8 string guitar where suddenly the fifth is no longer very consonant to some people's ears. That and the tuning instability (the higher pitch as you hit it) makes intervals not work so well down that low. Also as far as the term baritone goes, it just defines the range of the instrument. For guitars, a standard tuning is somewhere in the tenor range. A baritone guitar is tuned a fourth down from that to B (or a fifth to A). A bass guitar is tuned down an octave from the normal guitar (so an 8 string is a mix between tenor and bass range). A 9 string, if we really wanted to name it, might be contrabaritone or contrabass. It's all relative to guitar though, each instrument (and voice) has its own convention for these names. Good video though, keep it up!
No! Tempered tuning and commas (Pythagorean comma etc.) and non pure 5ths are not the reason why extremely low 5ths sound dissonant. As well as lower 3rds sound dissonant. It's something a lot of musical theorists dont tell you and even dont know. At least by theorie. Practically they all know. Two tones which sounds together forms a new tone. For instance an E on a guitar consists of a root frequency of (around) 80Hz. And additionally the harmonics at 160, 240, 320, 400, 480, 560, 720... It's 5th, the higher B consist of a foundation frequency of 120Hz. And harmonics at 240, 360, 480, 600, 720 ... Played together without distortion you have 80, 120, 160, 240, 320, 400, 480, 560, 600, 720, ... And thats more or less the same overtone spectrum like a bass note of E with 40 Hz. Except that 40 Hz itself, and some harmonics like 200, 280, are missing. But due to residduum hearing its the same. So playing a fifths is like playing the root one octave lover. And addionally when using distortion the missing harmonics and even the foundation frequencies will created by sum- and difference tones. So playing a 5th on the guitar at E will bring in even a lower frequency at 40Hz. Though, its low because amp and cab will not procudes such low frequencies well. But in higher octaves it will. Check it with an analyser or FFT! So playing ar choord is - thinking in pure frequencies, the sound is of cause different - more or less the same as playing a lower note of a frequency that is the biggest common denominator of the frequencis of the choord notes. And the higher this common divisor is, the more harmonic the choord sounds. And if this common divisor is lower than around 20 Hz it sounds disharmonic. Playing a 5th at the low B of a bass results in a resulting tone of 16 Hz. And thats more a beat frequency than a note. Musical theorie works only for specific absolute frequencies exactly. But musicians and componist know this by experiences. The more disharmonic an intervall is the higher it is played. Thats not the whole picture. There are still some effects and problems. But it gives a good overview. And a method to calculate, will this choord sound harmonic.
You can tell that the 8 or 9 string guitars have more of a sludgy sound when you get to the lower notes. Enough that it does make my ears feel sort of funny. That may just be me relying on my hearing a lot more since I am legally blind. I think that the if you are playing a 6-string guitar and metal today you're not metal enough is stupid. Let the musician make their own decision as far as what instrument they want to play. That's part of what sets musicians apart from one another.
I'm not going to be totally dismissive of the 9 string - but for me - I'm going to stop at my Schecter 8 string until I feel more comfortable with it physically, and get acclimatized to accommodating the extended low frequency range. Amplifying it properly is another issue - as what works on the low registers seems to like different processing than the high registers.
