Guitar 7-String Standard Tuner — Tune to 7-String Standard in Your Browser

7-String Standard adds a low B string below standard tuning: B E A D G B E. The seventh string sits a perfect fourth below the standard low E. Every chord shape and scale pattern from standard tuning still works on the top six strings — the seventh adds a downward extension without disrupting muscle memory.

The 7-string electric guitar entered metal in the early 1990s through Steve Vai and Ibanez's Universe model. By the late 1990s, Korn had built an entire genre — nu-metal — around the seventh string's bottom-heavy growl, and from the mid-2000s onward, progressive and djent acts (Meshuggah, Animals as Leaders, Periphery, Tosin Abasi's playing) made the 7-string the default. Outside metal, 7-strings are rarer but show up in jazz (George Van Eps designed an early 7-string) and fingerstyle.

Harmonically, the seventh string is a perfect fourth, not a fifth or third, which keeps the EADGBE relationships intact. This means CAGED shapes, three-notes-per-string scales, and pentatonic boxes all transfer untouched. The new vocabulary is purely additive: you have one extra string of low range, useful for riffing in B and E and for extending bass lines, but you do not have to relearn anything.

Beginner advice for a guitarist moving to 7-string: ignore the seventh string entirely for the first few weeks. Play your normal repertoire on the top six. Once that feels normal again, integrate the low B for power chords (single-finger barres on the bottom two strings) and palm-muted riffing. The biggest mistake new 7-string players make is over-using the low B because it is novel — the most musical 7-string playing uses it sparingly.