playing) and enormous classical music musical transposition archives and music composed for Russian 7-string guitar for 200 years in Russia. Because much of this music was published during the years of the Soviet Union, little of it left Russia, and printed scores of music for Russian guitar are difficult to come by in Europe or North America. Six string adaptations A common practice for six string guitar players of Russian romances and bard music is to retune their guitars using variations of the seven string tuning, such as: G2 B2 D3 G3 B3 D4 (no bass D string, also known as "dobro open G") D2 B2 D3 G3 B3 D4 (no low G) D2 G2 D3 G3 B3 D4 (no low B, the standard six-string open G tuning used by bard Alexander Rozenbaum) D2 G2 B2 G3 B3 D4 (no middle D, used by Bulat Okudzhava in his latter years when he adopted a six string) and so on. Popularity For many years, the seven-string guitar was far more popular in Russia than the regular six-string Spanish guitar; the latter was a rarity in Russia before the revolution of 1917. The Russian guitar gained significant popularity in the latter half of the 19th century with the increasing popularity of guitar oriented "city romance" songs. The six-string first came to serious prominence in the Russian classical guitar world when Andrés Segovia toured Soviet Russia in 1926. Possibly looking for something new and exciting to give life to their repressed craft, many Russian classical guitarists began making a switch to the six-string and the EADGBE tuning. Classical guitarist Piotr Agafoshin made the switch, and wrote a Russian book on six string technique that remains a standard to this day. The Russian guitar remained the standard for popular musicians until the 1960s, when a strong interest in underground music such as jazz and Western rock acts such as the Beatles and Elvis Presley developed. However, the parallel emergence of Russian bard music, which relied heavily on popular Russian guitar technique used in "urban romances", kept the seven-string guitar relevant. Actor Vladimir Vysotsky, arguably Russia's most prominent bard, retained his monogamous relationship with the seven string up to his death in 1980. Pioneering bard Bulat Okudjava switched to the six string in the early 1990s, but continued tuning it in open G (skipping the middle D). Thanks to the "bard boom" and cheap factory