History
In the Renaissance period, the guitar was generally strung with four pairs of strings, termed courses. Each string in a course was tuned to the same pitch. By the baroque period it had five courses and used a variety of tunings, some of the tunings re-entrant. During the eighteenth century six courses became common and the modern practice of using six single strings became the standard practice after 1800. These developments illustrate an ongoing desire on behalf of players to increase the range of the instrument. Seven-string guitars arose from such a desire and have been in use for over 150 years. French guitarist Napoleon Coste (1805–1883) composed works with a seven-string guitar specifically in mind. The Italian guitarist Mario Maccaferri (b 1899) was a celebrated advocate of bass strings (diapasons or bourdons). In Mexico a guitarra séptima or guitarra sétima with fourteen strings, strung in seven double courses has been used for an even longer time and descriptions of it date back to 1776 (Antonio Vargas). This makes the history of the seven-string guitar more than 230 years old.
Read more about this topic: Seven-string Guitar
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