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Olhe ao redor de nosso amigo Marcio de Triade Instrumentos Musicais, testando o projeto e honrando os caixa de charuto Guitarras
I'm so busy making cbg's, everything is build to order!
1,2,3,4,6 string cbg's, CBG/Bass combos (1 bass string, 3 guitar strings), electric washboards, suitcase bass drums, hand wound pickups.
I recently had the opportunity to have a special viewing of a 19th century Cigar Box Violin made from a guy in England. The Head and Pappalardo Curator of Musical Instruments at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Darcy Kuronen gave my fiancé and I special access to this piece.
The film about cigar box guitars „Low End Instruments” just qualified for the short films competition, Sundance Shorts. So, if anyone would like to help and vote for this film, that can be done at the link below.
You can vote everyday – just sign up. By voting for this film you give you support for its author, who spent a several months to make it done totally for the idea and no profits. Przemek has a chance for very nice awards, like invitation for Sundance Film Festival. The prize for voters is just satisfaction of well given vote.
Please vote here http://www.sundancechannel.pl/scshorts/ and find image with cigar boxes and Polish title "Instrumenty z dolnej półki" There are English subtitles.
How to vote?
After signing up there is no confirmation sent to your mailbox. Just be patient and after a while You’ll be able to sign in and just click the little heart-shaped icon under the “Low End Instruments” thumb. The AdBlock might be disturbing a bit.
Please be patient. Voting can take a while after the registration.
One click a day till May 8.
Be aware! Clicking once gives the support, but clicking twice gives dislike!
Watch the film
Instrumenty z dolnej półki, Przemysław Wawrzyniak, Poland from Sundance Channel Global on Vimeo.
Pre-order now. Percolator 1x8 combo kits ship on Friday, ready-to-play units shortly thereafter.
A new video of Glenn Kaiser playing an ol' Leadbelly tune on one of his cigar box guitars. He's using a Percolator Stack by Zeppelin Design Labs, a 2W tube amp and 1x8 cabinet. The COMBO is ON SALE through April 30. Order now!
Installing Piezo Pickup in Acoustic Guitar
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=aOJuCYgmPPE
I'm a scientist. I understand that correlation does not equal causation, but the mind does like to see patterns, even if it is with only three examples.
My first open mic was an unmitigated disaster. I didn't practice, was a little arrogant about how I would perform and had expectations that could not be met. I felt bad about my result, but challenged myself to do better a second time.
Second open mic was exactly the opposite. There was a fellow cigar box builder in the audience. I felt at ease. No nerves at all and I felt like I killed it with a solid performance. Lots of cheers and compliments. I don't think my perception is skewed much from that of the audience, but maybe. Still, I felt great afterwards.
My third open mic at Caffe Lena for the Saratoga Acoustic Blues Society was last night. It was a small crowd of regulars, but two new faces who were experienced and talented guitar players added to the night. My friend Ray, a Chemistry Prof from Skidmore College was the featured act and he brought his 1937 Martin. What an amazing sounding guitar. Truly incredible. Another performer, Clancy, played slide for the first time and he did well. Overall, these guys play more notes than I can hear with my eyes open. Closing my eyes to just hear their performances is a real treat. Many really great performances and their little goofs that frustrate them are hardly noticed. I could just sit and listen and be very happy with my $5 spent on the night.
I was on the card early in the night as the third performer even though I put myself in the #5 or #6 slot. Nevertheless, I felt ready. I had practiced a whole month. A whole month. Every day. But something was different last night. I struck up conversation with a couple of the guys near me, which is a feat in itself, but the room felt cold. I was freezing. No one else seemed to notice or mind. I couldn't sit still in my chair and I was vibrating. When I was called, I was visibly nervous. Where does this come from? I have demonstrated success here! I know what I'm doing. I am prepared.
I got up and spoke a little about my first song, Burying Ground, which I wrote a few years ago and which turtlehead beautifully arranged. I took his vocal lead and chord progression, and played it similar to a video I posted recently. Man, I stunk up the stage with it. Tempo was rushed to start and only got worse. I flubbed a IV chord that should have been V. I missed notes everywhere and my vocals were shaky. I intentionally skipped the second to last verse. I could have walked off stage, but I remained.
My second song really put me out there, way outside my comfort zone. I did the classic Son House song "Grinnin' In Your Face." Everyone chases this song that is simply vocals and clapping hands. It is an example of perfection. What am I doing attempting this song? I gave the audience the intro for the song, mentioning that I would have to play two notes for the song since I am no Son House. I simply played B flat and F to guide my vocals. But you really have to let go of everything to do this song. I closed my eyes hard pointed my face at the lights in front of me. There is no holding anything back and only in my superhero dreams am I Wolverine enough to do this song. But I did it, and I think I did well. Better than Aquaman, not as good as Ghost Rider.
My third song was "You Are My Sunshine" sort of in the style of Jamey Johnson and like the video I posted recently. I think it took everyone by surprise and I played it well, without mistakes. My legs were shaking the whole time though. Nerves. Nervous nerves. I think I could do better, but finished strong.
So why the nerves? I knew most of these guys and they know me. Everyone is friendly and I have a friend in the bunch. We laugh and joke that I can drop my guitar in a ditch and not make a bit of difference.
Well, I didn't have a brother in the crowd. A fellow builder. I met Ron Whitford at last month's open mic and while I'm normally not a guy to greet new faces warmly, he brought a CB Uke he built and was proud of. I felt great as he showed it to me. There is something different about anyone who enjoys making CBGs and similar instruments. We're a little strange to everyone around us, but like-minded and fit perfectly together.
Last night, Ron had other plans and couldn't make it. The room wasn't any different, but it felt different and it impacted my performance. How do I get past this feeling of cold sterility? The other performers don't feel it or don't let it impact their great performances?
Being a scientist, I have a strong need for control. Control all conditions. If I must do something, I must do it well and omit as many chances for error in my work as possible. Review everything critically. Prepare, prepare, prepare. I did all that. I video taped my practice and made improvements. Even with a strong middle and OK finish, my opening number was stinky enough to ruin the batch. Everyone is going to remember my shaking legs.
Last night, I found a solution for one thing I cannot control which is attendance. I am going to ensure there is a CBG player in the crowd. I'll simply bring an extra guitar, hand it to someone before the show starts and make them my surrogate. Control all variables. Through control or simple stubborn persistence, I am going to wrestle this pig into submission and make it my pet. Next month is coming at me.
My mate just had a go at making his first guitar....not a CGB but the same backyard style knocked up with some unusual bits, and sounds good too.....
A quick making of: The Neck Pickup,
After building a new neck and glueing the fretboard I had to cut of some inches and thought about using the scrap piece as a neck pickup housing for my current three string project.
Unfortunately the space is really limited for placing a hand wound single coil in it ( ...and for me pickup winding is an annoying, less relaxing job) so I decided to order some miniature relays (10 for about 10$) with a coil resistance of 2.3 kohms each.The first five coils died during the coil remove surgery at various steps (open the housing, removing the coil with its mounting bracket, removing the mounting bracket...throwing the coil on the floor after sucessfully perform the previous steps ;-) since the wire is ULTRA thin......a 0.063mm standard pickup wire is a massive rod compared to the wire they use for those relay coils.
But after some practice I easily removed three coils in a row without killing one
To avoid microphony, I used a carnauba wax solution normally used to seal hardwood floors or furniture (such as guitars :-). Its important to check if there is any agressive thinner in the wax solution which possible can attack the isolation coat of the copper wire.
To get the wax deep into the coil I used a syringe with a three way valve (a simple plug would do it also) throw the coil into the syringe, Fill the syringe with wax until the coil is fully covered, press as much air out as possible, close the syringe and pull the handle to the top end of the cylinder, hold it in place and watch until the amount of bubbles coming out of the coil is negligible (1-2 min)......now the coil is vacuum waxed and should dry for a couple of hours.
The housing was made of a neck scrap piece using drills and Dremel. Further steps: placing the coils in the housing, soldering the coils in series, check if nothing went wrong by using an Ohmmeter, adding small neodym magnets to the pole plate and pour some clear epoxy into the cavity.
A little sanding finish and done. Great sound, super small, nice distance to the strings, building time 45minutes, less than 5bucks needed for materials (after learning how to remove the coils without breaking the wire :-).
Have fun
Al
I have been sitting here for over two months not building anything. The closest I got was after the snow finally melted away two weekends ago, I moved most all of the tools from my winter shop in the basement back out into the barn where I work the other three seasons.
I have a few necks roughed in, a few blanks, some boxes that are in the state of becoming a guitar and other bits and pieces here and there. I feel fairly well organized. All the tools that were once scattered between two shops are in their correct places where I like to do each task. The floor is fairly well swept and I look ready to start. I have a lot of great cigar boxes and tins and I have another Sawzall box ready for cutting.
But I find little interest in either picking up where I've left off on a handful of guitars, or starting anything else. I have stood in front of the workbench with parts in front of me. Just standing there, pushing them around like a toddler does with veggies he doesn't want to eat. Those used humbuckers I put a relic finish on are the green garden peas of my life right now.
There's more in the making, but it is different.
There are three tangible things that have squashed this inner desire to build another guitar. First, is getting out to really perform. It is only 3 songs and it is an open mic, but it was a transforming experience. No one can suck worse than I did the first time. Don't let it stop you from trying it out even if you only have the smallest desire. No one is going to cut you. Second, I have this Sawzall box dobro I built. I made two electric Sawzall box guitars with humbuckers before making a resonator. To me, this one is a real personal achievement. In my mind, I don't know how I will make a guitar much better than this one. Please don't misread that to state I've made the best guitar ever. Just my personal best. I'll save the third thing for the very end of this post.
I played my first open mic a couple months ago and blogged about how terrible I was and how a few in the crowd kind of dismissed my instrument and me. I deserved it. I didn't show up prepared and stunk everything up really badly. It was like a seeing bad tattoo of a train wreck with a little revealing of a naughty body part while sucking on a lemon. You couldn't help but look, but it was terrible.
Despite the atrocity, something sparked that night and just about squashed my immediate desire to get back to the workbench and create something there. Instead, my Sawzall box dobro has hardly left a space within arms reach. For my second open mic, I put in considerable preparation and chose three songs I could do well and would make an impression with the audience. I was high off that experience for weeks. I came home that night and put the guitar down, but really didn't sleep too well. The next day, I picked it up and decided on two of the three songs for the next month.
Tonight is my third open mic at Caffe Lena and I have been practicing so much my hands are sore. Two days ago I finally decided on my third song which is the middle of my set. I struggled with wanting to play something with my new slide I got from Shane Speal, The Edge, but that was just feeling like something stuffed in the middle. When I made a lot of presentations at conferences, or for customers, I used to say, "put whatever you must tell the customer, but what you want them to remember least in the middle." My second songs were fitting that perfectly until a couple days ago.
That third thing that has quenched my thirst and slowed me down in the workshop? I'm really happy about this one and I'll take the risk of sounding like an insufferable, self-serving fanboy. I got one of my guitars to a pro performer, something that I never considered when I started making guitars for myself. It didn't happen because I wanted profit or endorsement which I had unsuccessfully considered over the winter. Instead of focusing on the tangible benefit, I went after what I really wanted, which was just to know a guitar I made is out on stage and played by someone far more talented than I am. The guitar has a great life out there and is connected with someone else. I get to live a little bit on stage anytime I get to see a picture of it out there in the wild. I get the same feeling when Clock or Oily share a video using their guitars that I built.
The pics below are Frank Blinkal of "Frank Bang and the Secret Stash" playing my Sawzall Box Guitar in Chicago. One of his songs, "Double Dare" meant a lot to me the first time I heard it. It was one of three times that music played a role in changing my life.
Woke up this mornin', cut off all my hair
Went for my secret stash, but all my cupboards were bare
No one promised tomorrow. No one said life would be fair.
No one promised me anything. Life's just a double dare.
I played a double dare the morning I heard that song the first time and life changed tremendously for the better after I did. By coincidence, I had just buzzed off all my hair that morning. It charges me up when I know I have a challenge in front of me. The killer guitar riff and the song made me an unstoppable force that morning. The guitar says "thanks" for that.
So I've kind of found my happy place for awhile. The weather is finally turning nicer and I plan to spend plenty of time busking in nearby Saratoga Springs along with the monthly open mics at Caffe Lena and I have a cousin's wedding in October at Dave Matthew's winery in VA where I'll be playing prior to the ceremony and the bridal march. I don't know when the urge to build another guitar, or finish what I have will strike me again, but I realize that if I try to force it, it won't fit. I'll either need some external inspiration from someone wanting a Sawzall box guitar or my CBG-maker-muse to show up again. I envision my stash of cigar boxes collecting dust for awhile.
Learning music needn't be hard. It may sometimes appear that way but that's more to do with how it's presented than anything else. I'm proposing a series of blogs to help demystify the study of music using methods that I've found effective over many years. The learning can be summed up in two essential premises
Premise no 1 - Words are only useful when they can describe what you are hearing.
All the blabbering on in the world won't make a scrap of difference if there's no actual music involved. Don't put the horse before the cart, you have to listen to musical sounds to have any idea of how they work. Learn to recognise the sounds you are making, then use words to describe what you're hearing, not the other way around.
Premise no 2 - Enjoy the journey, forget about the destination.
It's not complicated, in fact it's very simple, but it can take time and sometimes sticking with something over a long period of time can seem hard, or at least daunting. It really is however a case of enjoying the journey, if you can do that, and find a journey that is enjoyable you'll make real progress.
If you're looking for a quick fix then you'll ultimately be disappointed. You've seen the 'Play like a Rock god in 5 minutes' ads, they don't work. Of course they don't work. If you want a quick easy fix I'd suggest you look elsewhere, there are plenty willing to offer that.
To the task at hand
Get your guitar, let's say a three string tuned GDG.
- Play the open string in the middle (D) and listen intently to it, close your eyes and focus on it.
- Stop playing and in silence hear that note back in your head (this is the trick)
- Sing it out loud
- Do it again
- and again
- etc.
Once you've got that
- Do the same thing with the note on the first fret of that same string,
- and then the second.
- Now go back to the open string again, play, listen, sing.
- Do the same for the note on the second fret.
Keep playing, listening and singing these two notes until you can:
- Play listen and sing D on the open string
- Listen in your head for the E note on the 2nd fret, without playing it
- Sing the E note
- Play the E note to see how close you got. If you missed it play listen sing again.
- Rinse and repeat.
Give yourself time to do this, it won't happen overnight but it will happen with a little practice every day.
They say that the longest journey begins with a single step. This is actually a mistranslation, old Lao Tzu is more accurately quoted as saying that the journey begins from where you are now. This is how learning works, take something that you can do and build on it. You then have a new thing you can do and you can keep building.
See you in a fortnight Grasshopper.
I've been meaning to have a go at this for a while. I have seen it done a couple of times before. As always, I don't consider this to be entirely my own work or research, but rather a collaborative effort with others in the community. Let me share with you how I did it:
The benefits of this technique are:
- Improved ergonomics, indeed, the Novak guitars which famously used fanned frets were 8 string guitars. The fanned frets make the wider neck more comfortable to play.
- A different scale length for each string means that you have more control over individual string tension.
- Last but not least, it looks cool. I'm not ashamed to admit that this is the main reason I wanted to try this!
Making a fanned fretboard is certainly more involved, but not too difficult. The easiest way to explain how is that you want to measure the fret locations for a different scale length on either side of the fretboard. I measured the frets for a 630mm scale on the bass side and 600mm on the treble side.
The other consideration at this point is where you want the two scales to meet, i.e. which fret will be at a right angle to the neck. I chose the 12th, but it is possible to chose the nut (zero), or any other fret if you wish. I marked out the frets on the bass side first, then positioned the ruler at the 12th fret and measured backward from there from the treble side.
When cutting the frets, I marked them as usual with a pencil, then scored with a knife. When cutting the slots with my fret slotting saw I used wooden blocks clamped in place to get them as accurate as possible.
(Another very important consideration at this point is that if you are intending to taper your neck, mark the taper first, then the fret locations along where the final limits of the fretboard will be after tapering. It will not work the other way round! I had to make the fretboard twice, but fortunately I realised before I glued it) :-)
Is this making sense so far? This leaves us with a nut and bridge which will be on quite an extreme slant. This was tricky!
Both cutting the nut to shape and filing the slots was a real pain. Took a couple of attempts.
So that's about it really. This is the finished guitar:
So, is it nice to play? Absolutely. I feels really natural, and not at all weird. Is it worth the effort for a 3 string? Sure, why not! Would I try it again? Yeah, probably, although there's nothing wrong with good old fashioned straight frets. This was the most fun I have had making a CBG in ages. I think its the fear factor - I spent the whole time thinking 'this might not work' :-)
Give it a go if you fancy a challenge!
Richey
Download Full Album "Das Wohltemperirte Cigar Box Guitar" HERE: http://www.cdbaby.com/cd/captainnemoff2
