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Learn the easy way to build a Cigar Box Guitar. Check out my site.

Kits: http://www.mojocbg.com

I have considered actually using this blog portion to infect my thoughts on others, but does anyone actually read them? Hmmm. Maybe I will start ranting on a regular basis and see who notices.

In Scarlet Town where I was born
there was a fair maid dwelling,
and her name was known both far and near,
and they called her Barbara Allen.

T'was in the merry month of may
the green buds they were swelling,
sweet William on his death bed lay
for the love of Barbara Allen.

He sent his man down to town
to the place where she was dwelling,
saying: master bids your company
if your name be Barbara Allen.

Slowly slowly she got up
to the place where he was lying,
and when she pulled the curtain back,
said: young man, I believe you're dying.

Oh yes oh yes I'm very sick
and I shall not be better
unless I have the love of one,
the love of Barbara Allen.

Don't you remember that night ago
that night down in the tavern,
you gave a toast to all the ladies there
but you slighted Barbara Allen.

Oh yes oh yes I remember it well
that night down in the tavern.
I gave a toast to the ladies there
but I gave my heart to Barbara Allen.

As she was walking in yonder field
She could hear them death-bells knellin'
And every toll seemed to say:
Hard-hearted Barbara Allen

The more they tolled the more she wept
til her heart was filled with sorrow
She said: "sweet William died for me today,
I will die for him tomorrow."

They buried her in the old churchyard,
they buried him beside her.
And from her heart grew a red red rose
and from his heart a brier.

They grew they grew so awfully high
till they could grow no higher,
and there they tied a lover's knot,
the red rose and the brier.

By Michael Pointer Mace

>Jan. 4, 2009

So this is what’s on my interstellar record player: Dark Was The Night, Cold Was The Ground—Blind Willie Johnson, 12-inch gold-plated copper
disk.

“Papa, is it bed time?”

I consider the question closely. The children have been climbing on us for hours. I look longingly at the birthday present from my wife, a
1930’s Regal resonator guitar found at Top Shelf Guitar. It sits lonely in the
corner.

“Well,” I say looking at my watch. “It’s 5 o’clock.”

“Oh, it’s way past my bed time,” says the big one. She really has no sense of time. “Look how dark it is.”

“It is dark.” I agree. “But no, it’s not time for bed. It just gets dark really early this time of year. Our part of the earth is tilted away
from the sun. We don’t get much light. It’s the darkest time of year.“And it’s the coldest,” says the big one. She sits downcross-legged on a heating vent in the kitchen. Despite endless admonishments,

she is wearing a skirt and t-shirt. Both pink.

“Yes,” I say. “It’s very cold.”

At least she is wearing reindeer earmuffs.

I get down the globe and hold up a flashlight. I show her how we are in the earth’s shadow. How slowly, as we get closer to summer, we will get
warmer. I tell her that, from here on out, every day will have a bit more
light.

“Where are the rocket ships?” asks the big one.

“Most of them took off and eventually fell back to earth.” I demonstrate fingers blasting from the surface of the globe and crashing back. I
aim for oceans and avoid highly populated areas.

“But there have been a few, that took off and kept going. The Voyager spacecraft left our solar system in 2004, and won’t reach the next star for
40,000 years.”

The big one is nonplussed by the commute.

“Then what will it do?”

“It has a record player on it. If anybody finds it, they will be able to hear what earth music sounds like.”

“Is it like our record player?”

“The Voyager record player is space-alien friendly and it plays a record made out of gold!’

“Sparkly!”

“Absolutely.”

“Would you like to hear one of the songs?”

We leave the warmth of the heat vent and head to the record player. I cue the track. We turn off the lights and lie on our backs on the
living room floor. Blind Willie Johnson’s ode to the dark begins. He played
slide guitar. He was a Delta man. Carl Sagan apparently was a big fan and so
Blind Willie became one of our audio ambassadors to the stars. So while Blind
Willie’s gone from Earth, we still have his voice in a time capsule, his
message in a bottle.

Metal slides across metal. Notes float in and out of the western scale. The darkness allows us to see through the dining room ceiling and past
our house’s roof. We see past the lights of Bay View and past our fellow
planets and our solar system. We look for a spacecraft speeding away from us,
headed for distant suns. For 3 minutes and 22 seconds we look back 90 years and
forward 40,000.

Hi All.

I like to "play" ( pick the melodies of ) folk music. This is just a start. I plan to add additional songs to this post so I can have a copy of my song tabs that I can share with you all. My cigar box guitars tend to be diatonically fretted as are stick dulcimers (strum sticks) and mountain dulcimers. You can also find a lot of easy-to-play music by searching "strum stick" and "mountain dulcimer" web sites. My favorites I'll put here using a "play by numbers" format (listing the lyrics of the first verse and placing the fret number to stop above each word or syllable). If you are familiar with the tune, it should be real easy to learn to play.

Note: When searching the Internet for mountain dulcimer tabs, you need to swap around the tab lines for the bass string and the melody string; as the melody string is usually the bottom tab line on mountain dulcimers (but is the top line for strum sticks, guitars and many other instruments.). This just reflects how the mountain dulcimer is strung up, with its bass and melody strings reversed from how we normally expect them. With my simplified "play by numbers" method, you won't have to worry about this.

My instruments are usually tuned to one of the 1-5-8 tunings (usually D-A'-D' or G-D'-G') or the 1-5-5 tuning called D-A'-A'. My instruments also include the "six-and-a-half fret" (commonly abbreviated "6.5", "6+" or "6*"). This "optional" fret comes from the mountain dulcimer world, too. It functions to provide all the notes in the D-Major (or G-Major) scale. From the perspective of the major scales, it seems to me that fret 6 is the odd-ball fret, and that fret 6.5 should be standard. However, I don't like renaming it "fret 7" and incrementing all the subsequent fret numbers like McNally does on his Strumsticks as it just confuses everyone all that much more. Now this is an issue each time you find new tabs on the Internet. Fortunately, you can usually hear the problem if you are familiar with the tune. The song will usually sound "off" when they say to stop "fret 7" but really mean to stop "fret 6+".

Well, here's what I got so far. You can search the Internet for the full set of lyrics (and there usually are various versions of each song). This should get you started. Enjoy...


Well, it seems the blog post editor strips out multiple spaces in a row. Darn thing.

NOTE: The Ning software filters out spaces, so the
play-by-numbers list of numbers won't be positioned over the word or
syllable correctly. The best way to fix this is to copy the
play-by-numbers fret numbers and lyrics over to Notepad (or other text
editor) and re-enter spaces, moving the numbers over until each word or
syllable has one fret number over it. Then save this for a local copy of
the song. A bit of work, but if you like the song, it's an easy way to
get it.

==============
All For Me Grog
==============

  0   0   5   4    3
 It's all for me grog,

  2    1    2     3    1    0
 Me nog-g'n, nog-g'n grog.

  7     7    7     7     6   5    5    4
 All gone for beer and te- bac- co,

   5    6   7-8    7   5   3
 For I've spent all me tin

    3    2    1     4     3    1    0
 With the las- ses drin- k'n gin,

    3   4     5     7     6      5   5    4   3   2     4    3
 And ac-cross the wes- tern o- cean I must tra- vel.

Note: In line 4, the two notes specified by "7-8" are played for the word
"spent", almost like it were sung with 2 syllables.

===========
Barbara Allen
===========

=====================
Boil Them Cabbage Down
=====================

Chorus:

Additional Verses:

Pos-sum in a 'sim-mon tree, Ra-coon on the ground.
Ra-coon says, you son-of-a-gun, throw some 'sim-mons down.

CHORUS

Some-one stole my old coon dog. Wish they'd bring him back.
He chased the big hogs thru the fence, and the little ones thru the crack.

CHORUS

Met a pos-sum in the road, blind as he cold be.
Jumped the fence and whipped my dog and brist-led up at me.

CHORUS

Butter-fly, he has wings of gold. Fire-fly, wings of flame.
Bed-bug, he got no wings at all, but he gets there just the same.

(Many more verses)

=====================
Bonnie George Campbell
=====================

Additional Verses:

Note: This song was probably meant to be played with your drone strings.
So feel free to experiment with strumming strings 2 & 3 while playing the
melody. Imagine it as a sad song (lament) played to bagpipes.

=============

  Mattie Groves

=============

2/1   1  1   1    1 2  1   0
A    ho-li-day,  a ho-li-day,
1    1    1    1    3   4    5
And the first one of the year.
  5      7    7     5     5     4  2   1      0
Lord Dan-iel's wife came in-to the church
 0     1     3    0  2   1
The gos-pels for to hear.

2/1   1     1      1    1   2   1     0
And when the meet-ing it was done
 1      1    1   1  3  4  5
She cast her eyes a-bout
  5      7    7     5    5   4   2   1      0
And there she saw lit-tle Mat-tie Groves,
   0     1  3   0   2  1
Walk-ing in the park.

Come home with me little Mat-tie Groves,
Come home with me to-night
Come home with me lit-tle Mat-tie Groves
and sleep with me to-night.


More verses can be found here: Yet Another Digital Tradition Page

=======================
Oats & Beans & Barley Grow
=======================

===========
Old Joe Clark
===========

===============
Polly Wolly Doodle
===============

================
Quare Bungle Rye
================

==================
Sailor Went to Sea, A
==================

Note: On line two, you have a sharp ("4#") which should be played
by "bending" string 1, which is to say you push the string to one side
(or the other) as you press string against the fret. This will make the
note sound a bit sharper. With some practice, you should be able
to get something close to the "4#" note.

===============
Waltzing Mathilda
===============

Chorus:

===============
Wild Colonial Boy . . . . . . . . . . . . (C-G-C Tuning)
===============

Note: This song uses two notes from the second (middle) string ("2/2" and "2/0").
The notation used to name these notes includes the string number followed by
as slash (/) and the fret number. So, If your instrument is tuned D-A'-D', then "2/0"
would correspond to the " A' " note and "2/2" would correspond to " C' " note.
This is a commonly used notation scheme.

=============
The Wild Rover
=============