B♭ tuning

B♭ tuning, or A♯ tuning, is a method of guitar tuning (and stringed instruments per se) in which all strings on a six-stringed instrument, most often guitar, are tuned down by 3 steps. For example, standard guitar tuning is E A D G B E. B♭ tuning starts by tuning the lowest string on a guitar E, to B♭ and then tuning all strings down in the same interval of 3 steps down.

B-flat tuning.

Strings on a guitar tuned to B♭ are B♭ E♭ A♭ D♭ F B♭

Seven-string guitars achieve B and B♭ tuning because they have a lower B string below the E string, which is the lowest string on a conventional guitar.

Used by

• Adema on most of their eponymous album and Unstable.
• After the Burial (7-string guitars)
• Alter Bridge (similar to six-string E-flat tuning, but the lowest string is tuned down to B-flat)
• American Head Charge
• Arch Enemy (on some songs, those songs are tuned to A tuning in live performances)
• Behemoth (7 string guitars)
• The Black
• Boris (also with 6th string dropped to G# and D# on some tracks)
• Brian "Head" Welch on his debut solo album Save Me from Myself, as well as with Korn on their demo "Neidermayer's Mind".
• Buckethead on albums Inbred Mountain, The Elephant Man's Alarm Clock, The Cuckoo Clocks of Hell, and Island of Lost Minds.
• Cannibal Corpse on the album Vile and on, which is when guitarist Jack Owen started using seven string guitars. Cannibal Corpse's guitar players Pat O'Brien and Rob Barrett still use the tuning, but both down tune six string guitars. Pat O'Brien used to use a seven string guitar (BC Rich), but has recently switched to six string guitars (Ran).
• Carnifex
• Dir En Grey since "Dum Spiro Spero"
• Disbelief starting from 66Sick.
• Dream Theater, ("Panic Attack" from the album Octavarium, "Wither" from Black Clouds and Silver Linings, and "Paralyzed" and "Out of Reach" from "Distance Over Time".)[1]
• Edenbridge (7-string guitars) (since My Earth Dream)
• HIM (on their Digital Versatile Doom live performance)
• Hypocrisy (since Virus)
• Korn (7-string guitars, in Neidermeyer's Mind demo album)
• Linkin Park (uses the A#D#G#C#F#A# six-string variation on live performances of the songs "Somewhere I Belong" and "Easier to Run" from Meteora. Both songs are originally recorded in Bb standard seven-string)
• Lynch
• Meshuggah (on their earlier material when they were exclusively using 7 string guitars)
• Morbid Angel (since Covenant)
• Mushroomhead (on all albums since XIII, 7-string guitars).
• Mutoid Man (Stephen Brodsky started using the tuning during the recording of the Helium Head EP to fill in the low end of the sound, in an attempt to make up for their lack of a bassist at the time)
• Nevermore (7-string guitars, also used by guitarist Jeff Loomis)
• Nickelback on their song "This Means War" [2]
• Orgy (Amir Derakh used six-string guitar-synths and Ryan Shuck used a seven-string guitar)
• Pan.Thy.Monium
• Pissing Razors
• Revocation (7 string-guitars, on many songs in Teratogenesis (EP) and subsequent albums)
• Sepultura (since Roots)[3]
• Seth Putnam
• Slayer (songs "Here Comes the Pain" and "Not of This God" with Kerry King playing on a 7-string guitar)
• Sonata Arctica (7-string guitars, on some songs since "Winterheart's Guild")
• Sybreed
• Threat Signal (7 string-guitars, on their more recent material)
• Tesseract (7 string-guitars)
• Trivium (7-string guitars, also with the lowest string dropped to A-flat on some tracks, on albums Silence in the Snow and The Sin and the Sentence; also used on some songs on What the Dead Men Say while other songs in that album use 6-string drop D-flat)
• Winds of Plague (on the album Blood of My Enemy and their re-recording of the song "Decimate the Weak")

References

1. "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2014-02-03. Retrieved 2014-01-19.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
2. "Rig Rundown - Nickelback's Chad Kroeger & Ryan Peake". Premier Guitar. Retrieved 21 June 2012.
3. "Andreas Kisser – Sepultura – 2006". Guitar.com. Archived from the original on 23 August 2016. Retrieved 22 August 2016.