Russian Guitar

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Category: Instruments

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The Russian guitar is a seven-string acoustic guitar that arrived in Russia toward the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century, most probably as an evolution of the cittern, kobza, and torban. It is known in Russian as the semistrunnaya gitara (семиструнная гитара), or affectionately as the semistrunka (семиструнка), which translates to "seven-string".

These guitars are typically tuned to an Open G chord as follows: DBGDBGD. An alternative, the so-called Gypsy tuning, is DBGDCGD. The latter was typical of the Ukrainian kobza in the preceding century.

The invention of the Russian guitar is attributed to Andrei Sychra, who also wrote a method for the instrument, as well as over one thousand compositions, seventy-five of which were republished in the 1840s by Stellovsky, and then again in the 1880s by Gutheil. Some of these were published yet again in the Soviet Union in 1926.

This type of guitar has been called a 'Russian guitar,' as it has been primarily played in Russia, and later in the Soviet Union.

The Russian version of the seven-string guitar has been used by professionals because of its great flexibility, but has also been popular with amateurs for accompaniment (especially Russian bards) due to the relative simplicity of some basic chords and the ease of playing alternating bass lines.

The Russian guitar is traditionally played without a pick, using fingers for either strumming or picking.

A two-necked version of the Russian guitar was also popular; these guitars usually had 11 or 12 strings—one neck with seven fretted strings, and another with four or five unfretted strings. There are also some rare specimens that were built with an oval body.