How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
Three new tab sheets have been added to the knowledgebase library in the last couple of days, ranging from classic Americana to feel-good classic rock to a popular modern song. All are tabbed for 3-string cigar box guitars tuned to Open G “GDG”. Use the links below to view the posts about each:
Camptown Races by Stephen Foster
Now that we’re through Christmas, it’s time to get back to creating cigar box guitar tablature for popular songs, and here are the first two!
Your Cheatin’ Heart by Hank Williams – arranged by Glenn Watt
Blowin’ in the Wind by Bob Dylan – arranged by Ben “C. B. Gitty.” Baker
Enjoy!
We’ve just added a great new resource to the knowledgebase: Gitty’s Jamming Guides for 3-string Cigar Box Guitar!
This collection consists of 3 printable sheets that show you all of the chords needed to play most songs written in the keys of C, G and D – majors, minors and sevenths. These were designed with jam sessions in mind – with these on the table in front of you, you’ll rarely be at a loss for how to strum along with most popular songs!
Click the image to the left to go to the knowledgebase page, where you can click to view all 3 printable jamming sheets!
We’ve just added 3 new pieces of 3-string cigar box guitar holiday tablature to the library. All three were arranged and tabbed by Glenn Watt, who during the Christmas rush of orders has taken over from Ben/C. B. Gitty as the resident tab-master. Click the links below to check out each – all 3 even include videos by Glenn showing you how to play the songs!
This is probably the last batch of holiday songs we’ll be adding this year, so we hope you are able to put them to good use, and we also wish all of you a Merry Christmas and happy holiday season.
Just in time for Christmas, we’ve just posted a PDF of the 4-page Christmas Eve with Uncle Enos story, written by Daniel Carter Beard (co-founder of the Boy Scouts of America), and first published in the 1884-1885 edition of The Book Buyer.
This is more than just a story though, as it contains full how-to plans meant to get boys building their own 5-string banjos out of cigar boxes. As such it was both one of the earliest published mentions of cigar box instruments, as well as one of the first sets of published plans for how to build them!
Disclaimer: We present the digital version of the original document here in its full, unedited form. Some the terminology used in it in regards to race may be considered by some today to be offensive. We present it here only as a historical curiosity and educational artifact.
In this documentary, which is currently running on the local TV station in York, PA, Shane Speal and Ben “C. B. Gitty” Baker explore the secrets of the York Steam Whistle Christmas Concert – the last of its kind in the world. This steam whistle concert has been going on since the early days of the 1900’s, and the current whistlemaster has been at his post performing the concert every Christmas Eve for the past 60 years.
While Shane explores the story of the steam whsitle concert, Gitty builds a 116db pneumatic slide whistle from and old bicycle pump which Shane later plays onstage at a live concert. Along the way, Shane and Gitty discover and play an amazing forgotten instrument known as a “horse fiddle”, and they manage to get all giddy schoolboy-excited over crazy homemade instruments. Shane even performs an original song “Chasing Steam” on his cigar box guitar.
The Chasing Steam documentary starts around the 14 minute mark; the portion of the show before that features a poetry reading of a forgotten female poet from York, PA, with Shane playing in the background.
The 2014 edition of the Cigar Box Nation Christmas Album has just been released for FREE download. This album is made up of 35 tracks submitted by Cigar Box Nation members, comprised of Christmas and other holiday music played on cigar box guitars and other homemade/handmade instruments.
One-Hand Dan Russell is a rising force in the cigar box guitar performance world. Glenn Watt and I ran into him up at the Chicago Cigar Box Guitar Festival several weeks ago, where he performed on the main stage and also ran the C. B. Gitty open mic stage.
Now he has been featured on Tuscaloosa Monorail, a music talk show based in central Alabama that brings in original acts that get performances from “not the norm” bands. When they heard about a one-handed ex pro wrestler playing cigar box guitars on the streets, they contacted Dan.
Dan brought along Bart Lynn for a little trombone backup, and you can see the result in the video clip below! To check out Dan’s various other shenanigans, hijinks and all-around tomfoolery, here’s a link to his Facebook page.
Have you seen this? It’s a video lesson where the King himself, Mr. Shane Speal, walks you through how to tune your cigar box guitars and play them like Seasick Steve!
We’re busily creating new tablature sheets for popular Christmas and holiday songs and adding them to the tab library here on CigarBoxGuitar.com!
While it may be a bit early to start publicly performing Christmas songs, you should start practicing now so that when the season is truly upon us, you’ll be ready!
Click here or on the image to the left to see the songs we’ve added so far. There will be more coming in the days ahead, so check back often!
Check out this article from the Belfast Telegraph in the UK, in which Paul McCartney shares some of the backstory behind how he ended up recording a grammy-winning rock song in the middle of a Nivana reunion, while playing a cigar box guitar!
That guitar given to him by Johnny Depp was a “Cig Fiddle” built by our friend Matty Baratto of North Hollywood, California. Sir Paul appearing on stage with it during televised events (the 12.12.12 Hurricane benefit concert, and later that same week on Saturday Night Live) was the biggest burst of publicity cigar box guitars had ever gotten, and the movement has definitely grown because of it.
Thanks Sir Paul! Give us a call when you see this and we’ll have tea!
Many more chord form sheets have been added to the knowledgebase here on CigarBoxGuitar.com, completing the initial series for 3-string Open G GDG cigar box guitars. We now have sheets showing all of the most common and useful chord forms (with power chords, major chords, sevenths and minors) for G, A, B-flat, B, C, D, E-flat, E and F!
We have also created a guide to reading and interpreting the chord form sheets, to help you become more familiar with the concepts if you are a new player.
This is the most comprehensive free resource that has ever been compiled for 3-string cigar box guitars, and it is only going to keep getting bigger and better!