The How-To Repository for the Cigar Box Guitar Movement!
How to Build and Play Cigar Box Guitars and other Homemade Instruments
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.