Why seven strings? "I wanted things to happen, voices to move, not just 'Oh, that's a chord, 'dunh-dunh.' I wanted something to go 'de da da duh' inside the chord or for the bass to move a little bit," Van Eps once told the Los Angeles Times. "I don't care about playing nine million notes a second. I'm more interested in having every voice in a chord be a melody that both stands by itself and works with the others."