Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by t-belly johnson on April 3, 2014 at 10:40am

"The nation is a GREAT collection point for ideas and a great gathering place where hobbyists can congregate."

That line says it all. The nation is a place to go to find out how to......build....play.

If it`s not on here then there`ll be a link to what you want/need. There is loads of stuff about building and, I think, equally as much about playing. Loads of tips, videos, links.

Is there a need to find somewhere that focuses on the player side only?

There are loads of sites out there that do already so what are you asking for?

I`m not sure you can have a stand alone site just for music in a  CBG genre.Why?

Well I`m not sure there is a genre as such. There are so many forms our music takes. Do you want a classical CBG style, all acoustic, or an electric, modern style?

Do you want blues,rock,bluegrass?

Before you know it there`ll be a dozen or more sites to check out because the curious Joe Citizen likes a change.

So me, I`ll stick to the Nation because I can find more than enough here to keep me happy.I just ignore stuff I`ve no interest in.Easy peasy.

By the way I`m more of a builder but I do try to play.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Richey Kay on April 3, 2014 at 11:04am

"I`m not sure you can have a stand alone site just for music in a  CBG genre.Why?

I think you got it there T Belly. A big part of playing these things is the fact that they're home made. The building and the playing goes hand in hand, no need to separate them :)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by James O Lunsford on April 3, 2014 at 11:00am

I guess I fall in to that 50/50 group as I enjoy Building and playing and love to listen to others. as a singer song writer I like being able to share with others on here who have the same interest we all share. As a builder I build mostly for myself have never tried selling as I seen to always spend way to much on the build to ever make a profit but I like the Challenge of trying to get it as good as possible. I play all that I build all different, I have many Guitars 4 Cigar box guitars in process of building 3 more. I also have 20 other Guitars in my Collection I play them all. Been playing over 50 years worked on Guitars for many others set up and repaired . Will be Retiring soon so I'll have more time to Enjoy This Hobby and everything I enjoy doing . Ya'll Keep on playing and Building I'll keep on looking and listening .

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Jim Morris on April 3, 2014 at 11:12am

Real good points being made here. But I don't really like drawing lines. Especially in a folk type movement like CB instruments. I say "instruments" because I don't make just guitars out of boxes. Do we split the page for CB fiddles and another for dulcimers another yet for folks who don't play blues? That's what the Groups are for! I think we can be pretty inclusive here and I won't feel shunned for playing Appalachian fiddle tunes and not Blues, as much as I love the blues. Most musical "genres" have all kinds of sub-categories so what I play gets lumped under "Americana" but it's quite different from other music in that group! OK - enough pontificating. I'm gonna go make an instrument and then play it. Or maybe I'll play one I got from Uncle John but then I'd be in another sub-category! By the way - I love your playing Knotlenny.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by turtlehead on April 3, 2014 at 11:53am

Yup.  It's a folk movement and still in it's infancy. You might call it a revival, just like the 60's folk/blues movement.  That led us to rock, pop, disco, new wave, metal, grunge and hip-hop.  Now here we all are back at the beginning again.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by turtlehead on April 3, 2014 at 11:29am

I love the building aspect, but playing is the most important part of all this.  I will only play my builds and wouldn't consider buying CBG from anyone no matter how great it is.  That is the point for me - build it and play it.  Playing informs building and vice versa.  It allows you to create your own niche, sound and style.

It seems like we have the infrastructure and the audience here to do what you're saying Knotlenny, and it would be nice to see a little more diversity on the video page, but that means the folks who don't post need to start posting some songs and some of our prolific members could dial it back just a bit.  I usually do a couple a month at best and that seems to work for me. 

The genre thing is most intriguing and I think we are seeing more interest in theory and playing here lately.  I really believe that as a group we are just scratching the surface of what's possible on 3 or so strings. We run the gamut from the Civil War era to modern day, but the primal sound still carries through. 

I'd like to see what happens in about 5-10 years when some young blood gets there hands on these kinds of instruments.  I just turned 40 and feel like I'm on the young end of the spectrum here.  If this revolution is going to last, we need another generation to come up and show us something new. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Cause the Blue rat on April 3, 2014 at 12:49pm

I really think this forum has already answered your query. We have a Performance section and a Builders section in the forum. And to even farther divide things up we have Groups. The best part about groups is you can add one if what your looking for isn't there. Doesn't get any better than that. Media is also provided for both players and builders. Video and Pictures. And just like the rest of the forum you can mix and match there too. Take a pic of you playing and a vid of your building technique. This place is a one stop for all things around the idea of no rules guitar, banjo, violin, dulcimer , ukulele, bass and what ever else you can make and play by hand. You choice to make an instrument as ruff or engineered perfect as you like.

The true spirit of the original cigar box instruments was to take what you have and make the best you can out of it. If you look closely at these old instruments they were crafted. Some ruffly. But the heart of it is still the best effort that person could do. Even if it was just a stick in a box. It was never meant to be primal. They were trying to achieve by hand what they couldn't afford to buy. Primal was never the goal. That good parlor guitar or Marten they heard. That fancy banjo or violin. If someone came up with a great sounding instrument people would copy it. Even try to make it better. A primal sound is an option for us. The best sound they could get was the goal of our predecessors.

I'm not sure you would be able to classify a genre based on a set of instruments. A sub classification of a genre platform perhaps. Huge diversity in every music genre. Way to much overlapping. The Hindu inspired plutonic blues played on an electric guitar is just as 'blues' as Sun House on an acoustic. Folk or blues played on a box and a stick or a piano is still folk and blues. i do understand where your coming from. It's the sound of the instruments being played. However in truth is just a different sounding guitar.

Love to build, love to play, love both. It's all art.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Spence's Rye on May 1, 2014 at 1:14pm

Forgive my ignorance... How would one go about adding a group?

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Wichita Sam on April 3, 2014 at 1:38pm

Hey Knotlenny, I think that the inbalance between builders and players has to do with performance anxiety. It is easier to build a CBG that looks passible enough, and that will draw positive comments than it is for most to play something that sounds passible to our media conditioned ears. I have built scores of CBGs before I got the nerve up to play before another person.

I think that builders measure their work by NOT comparing them to commercial , widely accepted instruments. We are proud to be different. And we can do the box, stick and string with minimal technology. But, players often feel like they could never measure up. And, at least to me, the technology needed to record anything that sounds decent seemed impossible to grasp.

Maybe what would help is those who have the technology of music recording and production mastered to do a series of how to tutorials like the how to build tutorials or Shane's playing tutorials.

For a builder to become a player is a longer evolution. Even if you have playing potential, it seems to me that the journey from the basement to the street is a long and often intimitading one.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on April 3, 2014 at 5:03pm

Sam,

I will try, on my next original song, to document the process of:

1) Song creating - from scratch: structure, tempo, rhythm, playing technique, key, fingering, tuning, guitar choice, amp selection...whew, this is gonna take hours!
2) Lyric writing - this is gonna be tough, cramming the camera inside my head. And replaying all the books, poems, movies, conversations, relationships, etc. in my life.
3) Recording, both audio and video, the way I do it
4) Post production - editing, tweaking, re-editing, file saving, uploading, self-promotion

Should provide weeks of fun.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Wichita Sam on April 4, 2014 at 2:33am

Ron, thanks for your taking up the task.  Right now, I am totally "Low-fi" in that anything I record comes of the computer's camera and mic.  I know that I have some gear to do better.  I am a point and grunt learner.  What you are offering should be a big boost.

 

In a way, what we are talking about is "kitting" for sound/video.  From the early days when Darren Duke and others started selling kits, up to today with Gitty doing the same, this has been a way for many to get their foot in the door for bullding.  In a way that is what you are offering on the performance side.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on April 4, 2014 at 2:48am

Ok, so in a few minutes, I'm gonna sit down with my iPhone, and attempt to vid myself writing lyrics to a phrase that popped into my head in the shower this morning, based on the idea that it was time I try to write a country CBG song about drinking. More to come later this afternoon / evening.

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• 2
• 3
• 4
• 5
• …
• 12
• Next ›
• Page