Comment

Comment by t-belly johnson on March 26, 2018 at 7:14am

Great stuff..... and I don`t care they are pj`s  ;)

Comment by James O Lunsford on March 26, 2018 at 6:17am

Sounds good nice paying Snuffy

Comment by Snuffy Smith on March 26, 2018 at 4:34am

This is my 6th original ditty on CBG (cigar box guitar). And I am on day 306 now in playing a stringed instrument. 

I got the initial idea for this song last July, two months after I started playing CBG. I was searching online for guitar tabs (not that I thought I could play or read them - I couldn’t) and I stumbled across tabs for the Jimi Hendrix song, When The Wind Cries Mary. Honestly, I truly had no idea what I was doing, other than just trying to find the sequence of chords (it was beyond me), and as I was fiddling around trying my best to make any sense of the tabs (gibberish), I accidentally played a short sequence of notes that sounded, well, kinda COOL…and UNFORTUNATELY, nothing like Jimi Hendrix at all, LOL. Oddly enough, for whatever reason, it reminded me of old-skool Neil Young (it's laid back and folksy). So I quickly recorded this tiny/short musical phrase and sent it off to my buddy, Dave, in California. Dave’s response: “It sounds musical.” Hehehe. I took it as a compliment (after only playing for 2 months). So I started playing this tiny/short phrase over and over, and adding alot more to it. Eventually, I added a long break in the middle (the prog rocker in me) and played it that way forever, until it dawned on me that it didn’t fit the song, so I ripped it out (save it for another time). I eventually added something shorter and reconnected the song…relearning it all over again. This song taught me alot on the CBG. What exactly? Well, I learned how to strum a guitar. I’ve NEVER “strummed” in my other ditties. I just fingerpicked! So this is a new skill for me - strumming!

I made many, many, many videos of me playing this song (2.5 hours of them) over the last couple months. Some videos where you can see all of me, some videos where I’m playing just acoustical (no amp), some videos playing along with a drum machine, some videos playing it up-tempo, etc, etc. But the one video that sounds the best (LOL - the most error-free) is probably my most embarrassing, as I am playing very late at night in my “late-nite sloth rags” (everybody wears them). This video is from February 23rd. There is one blemish though – a bad note, right at the very beginning (look for the “OOPS!”). I’m still a self-taught beginner that doesn’t even have the notes on the neck memorized ("What note is this?"), so you gotta give me a break. I love playing this thing. It is such a joy to be musical again. Now if only my neck would stop hurting…this getting older stuff sucks.

Anyway, enjoy...

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