Your lucky number: Peter Hodgson's seven favorite 7-string guitar songs.

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Jeff Loomis, "Jato Unit"

Loomis' seven-string skills are put to great use on this monster.

Big octave melody lines, low palm-muted riffage, wide arpeggios, whammy bar dives, syncopated rhythms -- this one is a great song to sharpen your skills, and, if you're a proficient six-string player making the transition to seven for the first time, it's a great one to cut your teeth on.

Make it to the end and you can truly call yourself a seven-string guitarist.

John Petrucci photo: Marty Temme, johnpetrucci.com

Peter Hodgson is a journalist, an award-winning shredder, an instructional columnist, a guitar teacher, a guitar repair guy, a dad and an extremely amateur barista. In his spare time he runs a blog, I Heart Guitar, which allows him to publicly geek out over his obsessions. Peter is from Melbourne, Australia, where he writes for various magazines as well as for Gibson.com.

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