You’ve Never Seen a 9-String Guitar Played This Way Before

Nine-string guitars seem to break the metalsphere. Rob Scallon knows this all too well: an original 9-string guitar composition he published in December that boasted it used all 9 strings (unlike so many extended range guitarists) got over 300,000 hits. Holy crap!

Scallon is back with more 9-string shenanigans, and he’s still using all of the strings, but this time he’s not playing metal at all. “Royale” features Scallon slapping and popping at the guitar’s strings all the way through, basically treating it like a bass… which makes plenty of sense given that the extra strings on extended range instruments are typically on the low-end. In some ways a 9-string guitar is really a 9-string bass, just with some high strings added — how come it took someone so long to think of playing one in this manner?