8-string guitar stave

Question

As we are all aware, the convention is to write guitar notation an octave higher than concert pitch. However, this convention is problematic for anyone putting together a score for extended range guitars.

An 8-string guitar's lowest note is an F sharp. In the following image, we can visualise this. In the treble clef we see a bottom E as it is in standard notation, followed by an F sharp. In the bass clef we see this same E, followed by its true position an octave lower, and by the true position of an 8-string guitar's bottom F sharp.

This suggests that there is nothing illogical about writing the notes in their true position. We are merely changing the clef.

Some of you may be wondering why we should care, especially since extended range players are in the minority. However, there are enough such guitarists to warrant having a discussion on this. After all, the impetus for my post is the fact that I intend to put some scores online. I didn't really want to publish them using the traditional convention, so it would be nice to hear someone say they agree with me.

Thank you for your thoughts!

Answer 1

Guitar notation developed for music with most notes fitting within 3 octave range. 8 string electric guitar with 24 frets covers almost 5 octaves in standard tuning.

The best solution may depend on the specific material to be notated. Some things to be considered:

• the guitarists are used to notation in treble clef transposed by an octave, so it might be the best starting point
• if music is monophonic, with passages gradually moving between high an low registers, maybe additional octave shift marks are sufficient
• otherwise I would suggest notation similar to piano staff, with both treble and bass clefs transposed by an octave. The image below shows an example notation of the 8 open strings in standard tuning, in two versions:
  1. distributing the notes uniformly between the staves
  2. notating the top 6 strings on the upper staff, and using the bottom one for the bottom two strings only.

• For polyphonic two-handed tapping material a good solution would be to devote each staff for each hand, and either change clefs as needed, or use octave shift marks.

Answer 2

Notation isn't about about logic, it's about communicating the music to the performer in a way that they will be able to read fluently.

Traditionally, guitar music (when written in staff notation) uses a treble clef (with an octave shift). You might well argue that even 6-string guitar music ought to written: at sounding pitch, in bass clef. But, that's not what guitarist are used to, and they probably don't want to learn a new system when the system they have already learnt is perfectly adequate.

I suggest using a grand staff (with an octave shift) and putting the extra 2 strings in the bass clef staff (as in user1079505's second bar).
This is not because it is more logical, but because the guitarist will already be familiar with the notation for the normal 6 strings, and the extra 2 strings will be easy to distinguish.