The How-To Repository for the Cigar Box Guitar Movement!
How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
Did you know that we have a collection of Patriotic and other “Americana” song tablature in our knowledgebase library?
For the one-string canjo, we have My Country ‘Tis of Thee.
For 3-string Cigar Box Guitars (tuned to Open G GDG), we have America’s anthem, The Star Spangled Banner, arranged by Glenn Watt.
As an added bonus, we have Woodie Guthrie’s This Land is Your Land, a classic folk song celebrating the wide expanse of America’s beauty.
Have a happy Memorial Day weekend!
We have just added two new historical video clips to the library here on CigarBoxGuitar.com, both from the late 1920’s in New Orleans. The first shows a “spasm band” in action, complete with homemade drum sets and dancing kids. The second shows more dancing and another homemade drum kit, with the player being possibly identified as “Cocomo” Joe Barthelemy, a long-time New Orleans jazz musician and street performer.
Click here to check out the Historic Video section of our knowledgebase library, or click the image to the left (a screen capture from the video, thought to show Cocomo Joe Barthelemy playing his homemade drum kit in 1928).
These early spasm band performers were some of the forerunners of the modern Jazz genre, and it’s really cool that so many of them utilized homemade instruments.
Check out this recent addition to our knowledgebase to check out this old “music video” (they called them Soundies back then) from 1942, where Spike Jones and his band play an old hillbilly favorite “Pass the Biscuits Mirandy”. Shane Speal recently discovered this vid, and noticed that a cigar box guitar is part of the collection of homemade and impromptu instruments being played by the band in the video!
This is a great historical artifact… who knew they were even making music videos back in 1942, let alone including cigar box guitars in them!
In this new knowledgebase post, Ben “C. B. Gitty” Baker recounts what he has learned about using trademarked, branded items (like cigar box guitars, oil cans, beer cans, tin advertising signs, etc) in making musical instruments for resale.
Turns out, there some bad news and some not-so-bad-but-still-somewhat-worrisome news. If you are building and selling, or intend to build and sell, cigar box guitars or other items that include a repurposed item that includes another companies trademarked branding images, you need to read this article.
C. B. Gitty has been busy designing and creating a new series of laser-cut tools and templates to make it easier to build cigar box guitars! From sound hole templates to fretting scale templates, and even a cool neck-notching template, these tools can help take your CBG building to the next level.
A new free fretting calculator has just been added to the knowledgebase here at CigarBoxGuitar.com. Simply enter in the scale length you want (in either inches or millimeters) and it will show you the distance from the nut to place each fret from the first fret to #36 (you don’t have to use all of them).
The calculator even shows you which frets to skip to end up with a diatonic (dulcimer-style) fretboard!
Click the image to the left or click here to check out the calculator tool.
C. B. Gitty invited its customers to show off their wildest, most inventive and artistic diddley bows. Twenty two builders submitted their photos. Here’s a full gallery.
The top three builders will receive C. B. Gitty t-shirts. The winners will be announced in the Gitty email newsletter.
During the dark days in the trenches of World War I, soldiers created all sorts of amazing pieces of “trench art” to help pass the time. Shell casings, empty cartridges, gas cans and all other sorts of military garbage were crafted into sometimes amazing works of art, from ash trays to lamp stands, drinking glasses, vases and more. Some photo evidence suggests that the humble cigar box guitar also made appearances in the trenches of Europe. (For more info on the subject of trench art in general, check out the Wikipedia page here).
This story recently appeared on the BBC web page about one particular piece of trench art, a cello crafted from a metal gas can. As the story goes, it was built by a British soldier during World War I and was never played… until now. Check out the full article (click this link or the photo to the left) for more of this great homemade/handmade musical instrument’s story.
Here is the latest cool old U. S. Patent we found to share with you – #223318 from way back in 1880!
This one shows a double-necked Appalachian-style dulcimer, with a rectangular sound box, which was granted a patent in 1880.
Believe it or not, this style of dulcimer actually played a roll in rural courtship rituals… do you know how? Check out the knowledgebase post to find out!
Want to try your hand at building your own dulcimer out of cigar boxes? Check out this post where dulcimer-whiz Diane shows you how!
One-string cigar box violins/fiddles played a big role in early vaudeville performances, and if you’ve ever thought about building one, here’s your chance! We just added a new entry to the “Historic Plans” section of the knoweldgebase – a great old magazine article from 1948 showing you how to build a simple one-string cigar box violin.
We even included a link to a video post over on Cigar Box Nation where you can see W. C. Fields making quite a todo over playing one of these instruments.
We’ve just added a new category to the Cigar Box Guitar History section of the knowledgebase here on CigarBoxGuitar.com – historic photos! In this section we will archive a range of historic photos and illustrations showing not only cigar box guitars but also other homemade/handmade instruments.
If you have or know of any such photos, be sure to send them to us or send us a link of where we can find them!
These days it isn’t hard to find information about cigar box guitars and cigar box guitar building on the internet. Between sites like this one, CBGitty.com, Facebook, YouTube, and a host of other 3rd-party sites, the Internet seems increasingly full of a plethora of information.
It’s easy to forget that there was a time, not all that long ago, when finding information about cigar box guitars was a lot harder. One site that permanently changed that for the better, is www.CigarBoxNation.com, which for the past 6 years has been the central meeting point, community and repository of the cigar box guitar movement.
Cigar Box Nation was founded by Shane Speal in late 2008, and since then it has grown to over 13,000 members from all around the world, who have uploaded hundreds of thousands of photos, videos, forum posts and more.
While CBG enthusiasts have found a number of other venues to show off their creations, “The Nation” as it is called by fans is still the best place to create a permanent record of your creations and get them seen by other builders, and see what others have done. It is also the best place (after this site) to research building and playing info, and ask questions.
So if you haven’t checked out Cigar Box Nation yet, you owe it to yourself to have a look. There is a LOT to take in there, so don’t get overwhelmed your first time. Sign up & join, check out some photos and vids, read some forums and posts, and maybe upload a photo or vid yourself. Get involved, and have fun!