new camcorder and Youtube

Hi folks, I'm still here but not been doing much on the cigar box guitar front lately. I seem to have been more involved with my electronic activities. I really feel I need to get on with playing, experimenting and recording some music so the building side of things has taken a bit of a back seat. You know how it is with these things. The creative drive seems to get focussed in one particular direction for me and my other stuff goes on the backburner.

For some time I've been toying with getting a camcorder but didn't want to spend too much money on one and didn't want to get distracted with a new hobby. The main reasons for getting one is that the stuff I put on Youtube is quite low res because it's done on my little digital camera. It only allows me to do about 5 minutes or recording too so that's the reason I've not put any new stuff on for a while even though I've kept promising it. Well I found a cheap but adequate camcorder in a second-hand shop and so I'm intending to do a few vids soon. I want to show people my reso 6 stringer I built and a few of my circuit bent projects so don't give up on me just yet. I'll post on here when I've put something new on.

And here are a couple of new vids

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19ThCkwj6VE my electric resonator guitar

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6RfWqeO9HvY and my "333" three string solid body cbg style guitar

this and that in smojos cigar box guitar world

It's been a bit of a frustrating time here and an exciting one too. Still a bit quiet on my CBG front. Much as I love 'em, there are many other interesting distractions going on in my life. First the frustrations - I bought some cool looking lipstick pups, cheap, with the intention of building myself a super duper CBG with frets and a proper magnetic pickup. Got as far as cutting the neck from a piece of old shelving when my bandsaw blade snapped. So that one went on on hold.

As you will have noticed, I've been heavily into the electronics side of things. Not a million miles away from the cigar box guitar ethos of making something cool and musical out of junk or stuff that was never meant for that purpose. So I started "bending" an old casio keyboard. Found a cool distortion bend, drilled holes and mounted the switch and two pots. Working one minute - the next it was just making a horrid buzz. Messed about but can't seem to fix it. Maybe I burnt out something. So that's on hold too. Moved on to a new electronics project - making an envelope follower from the Nic Collins book. You can connect a sound source like a guitar or CD player and it's supposed to light some LEDs when the signal peaks or dips. Got the preamp part made but can I get the LEDs to come on when they should? - no, on hold too.

So what are the exciting bits. Well I had an great weekend in Manchester with my mate who had organised the Hollowbelly gig at his local pub. Great atmosphere and the whole thing went down well. Hollowbelly belted out his excellent punk blues material whilst entertaining us with some funny stories in between. The support act was great too, three local people who got together with slide guitar (and CBG), african drum and cigar box bass to play some nice bluesy stuff. Lot's of time to chat about music stuff and do a bit of jamming back at my mates too.

I bought an old ex-forces bakelite communicator set which is a chest mounted microphone and headphones. I was looking for an old telephone receiver to make a distortion mic and I found this. Might be ww2 but if not, will probably be at least 50 years old. I dismantled the set to make three mics, the chest mic I'll keep for myself, the two headphone mics I might eventually sell on. They look so cool and make fantastic hand held mics for vocals or harp where you want a bit of an old-timey, mildly distorted sound. If I get time I'll post a photo or two.

Finally (please forgive me but let me explain) I'm about to build a solid body electric 6 string guitar. As I said I do love CBGs but I suffer from GAS (guitar acquisition syndrome) where I have to keep getting a fix with a new guitar. I see something cool and I want it! Yes my friends you know what I mean. The explanation will justify the diversion from 3 strings, a stick and a box guitar. For some time I've wanted the personal satisfaction of building a "proper" guitar. Something really cool and unusual. Also to take my luthier skills a little higher and get to grips with the more complex elements of guitar building. There's a local guy who runs courses on guitar building on a one-to-one basis. I went to see him this week to talk about starting with him. My initial idea was to make something based on the old guyatone solids of the 50s/60s. They look so cool with their simple retro shape and colours. But I do have a really nice Harmony Stratotone reissue that fits the bill so what to build instead? Then the bulb lit up in my head. A solid body reso similar to the National supro reso guitars. A bit of research showed that they make a modern version still. So my design will be based on that but with a bit of the guyatone look about it. It will have an under-saddle piezo and a single coil neck pickup. I've done a very rough photoshop job to get some idea of what it might look like and here it is. I'm starting the build this wednesday. We're going off to a timber yard to chosse the wood and then back to cut it up and glue the two body halves - can't wait! I'm gonna keep a record of my progress and put something on here so if you're interested, come back and take a look regularly. It might just get me inspired enough to get cracking with my lipstick pick-upped CBG too.

some of my music on soundcloud

Just found this site where you can upload your music to share with the world. I've put some of my cigar box guitar and circuit bent recordings on it.
http://soundcloud.com/smojomusic

April update

I feel slightly guilty that I aren't writing about cigar box guitars seeing as this blog is about them. The reason being, that I haven't made any for a little while since I really got into electronics but let me explain where I'm coming from and how it all fits into the ethos of what this stuff is all about. I think it's right to say that most people are into CBGs because they look cool and different but also because there's a certain perverseness about it. Making a great playable instrument from an old cigar box and a stick. It's sort of sticking two fingers up at the big manufacturers who charge thousands for their guitars and saying "I can make something sound pretty damn good out of a heap of junk". So after I'd made a few guitars I naturally wanted a cool little amp to go with it, hence the re-interest in electronics. I found it just as enjoyable making an amp as I did making the guitars. That led me onto making a few other related things out of junk - tobacco tin mics using old telephone receivers, a simple two channel mixer (more of a combiner - no batteries required). Then I somehow discovered "circuit bending" - modifying electronic toys and other devices to make more interesting sounds. On the surface it seems a long way from making c.b. guitars but it's the same ethos behind it. Taking something that was intended for an entrirely different purpose, modifying it and adding your own creative stamp to it, to produce a cool, fun packed instrument. So first efforts were attempts at toys and I'm pretty pleased with one of them. You can see it on Youtube http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic#p/u/9/j6KJD_SkTEk Then I discovered the wonderful book by Nic Collins "Handmade Electronic Music". He has made some amazingly weird stuff and you might want to look for him on Youtube also. What has got me fired up now are the circuit designs he decribes using logic chips to make oscillators. Again the CBG ethos holds good as he is using chips that were designed for computers and other digital devices and making them perform in a musical way,. By combining several oscillators together you can make some pretty cool synth and drone sounds. You can use them to make a simple tremolo box and panners and mixers for combining several devices together plus many other ideas. Nic shows you just how to do it in a fairly easy to understand way. So that's where I'm at at the moment. I will come back around to talking about CBGs but I have to explore this path a little further yet. I have a project part finished using the old electrical tester box I showed you a while ago. It's shaping up nicely and I hope to somehow combine the drone/synth type sounds from it with some CBG playing. No idea how that's going to come out but that's all part of the fun - musical adventures. If you decide to look for some of these noise boxes or circuit bent toys on Youtube, you might be forgiven for quickly getting bored and even irritated at the squeaks and squeals that come out of them. I figure the main reason is that most people who have posted vids of their creations, have little or no musical talent. They are mainly electronics geeks. So don't let that put you off having a go at making some if you are interested. If you have some musical knowledge/skills, it's fairly easy to apply the same principles of music making to these devices. Create a regular beat or rhythm with them and try to find sounds that harmonise with each other. If you look at the boring stuff you'll realise that that is what's missing. Most people are simply demonstrating what weird noises they can get out of them rather than trying to make something listenable. I'll try to demonstrate that for you. Visit my website here http://www.smojomusic.co.uk/ and scroll down the home page to the jukebox. Have a listen to "While Giants Sleep". The ticking clock and the snoring sounds were created on the circuit bent toy and looped on my Akai Headrush. I then added some melancholic cigar box guitar playing over it. Hope it might inpsire you to try something different yourelves.

Happy New cigarbox guitar Year

Hope you all had a great Christmas and maybe got some cool new toys. Had some problems with my internet and couldn't watch anything on Youtube for a while - bummer! Just completed two new CBGs. One of them was built for someone who asked for frets. I'm not keen on fitting them as they can be a pain and difficult to set up. Anyway I built it and it's a little beauty. The guy asked if it could be "ratty" so that's what I made. Trouble is I've fallen in love with it myself and it'll be hard to part with it. A lot of processing went into getting that "rough-as-shit-but-cool-and-also-plays-well" result. Here's a photo of it. Not happy with the strap so I'm gonna change it for a piece of tea-stained rope which is more in keeping with the style. I made a quick but rough vid of me noodling on it. You can see it here if you wish.

http://www.youtube.com/smojomusic#p/u/6/5khi9NPCQ2E

I'm taking a bit of time out from CBG making so I can complete some of my other projects. remember the nasty day-glo yellow electric 6 stringer I bought in a charity shop? Well it was never gonna stay that way. I decided to chop the body down to a small rectangular shape and cover it with pieces of old brass or tinplate to make a ratrod slider. I've made a start, I stripped all the parts off and cut the body. Just started with the metal plating. So far so good. I'll post some photos of it's progress soon.

Music-wise, I have been getting into some weird experimental stuff. Started out just experimenting with different effects on my pedals. I hit on some pretty heavy, dark sounding stuff which kinda reminded me of some kind of hellish workshop or satanic place. Some of them came out as workable pieces so I hit on the idea of doing a series of them along the theme of Dantes Divine Comedy also known as The Inferno. He describes his trip through the various circles of hell. The imagery of his poems is very inspiring and so I've used that to put suitable titles to my tracks. You can hear what I've recorded so far on my CigarBox Nation page here. look for the music section on the left of the page.

http://www.cigarboxnation.com/profile/smojo

Getting even weirder than that, I've got interested in circuit bending againv after getting a cool book at Christmas. Re-wiring old electronic toys and such to get weird sounds. I've made some great contact mics from piezo disks and been experimenting with sounds made from everyday objects, interference from electrical equipment etc. I haven't been able to make anything particularly musical from it yet but hoping to combine some of these sounds with some bluesy CBG playing for something a little different from the usual 12 bar shuffle. What I love about this whole thing is how diverse you can get. No need to ever get bored with your guitars. And best of all - it's a helluva lot of fun.

thinking outside the box and charity shop finds

Forgive the pun about thinking outside the box but that's just what I was doing on one of my charity shop trawls. I rarely find cigar boxes in these places but sometimes I pick up something that relates to my unorthodox musical taste. I spotted this horrendous looking electric guitar. A cheapo heavy metal styled jobby in day-glo yellow. Well the price was the factor in deciding whether to buy or not - £15. Totting up ebay values of the hardware alone told me it was worth at least £30 in parts. Two single coil and one humbucking pickups plus wiring to two pots, machine heads, strat style tailpiece and a half decent neck and a see-through plastic gig bag - how could I resist. I could just dismantle it for the parts and build them into CBGs but I'm thinking about cutting the body down to a big cigarbox shape, keeping the humbucker and pots. Repaint the neck and headstock in something more subdued and maybe cladding the chopped down body with some rusty tinplate and turning the nasty thing into something even nastier (but cool).

I seem to have strayed back into circuit bending territory and my charity shop finds included two electronic childrens toys that are great items for modifications. Even as they are they can be used to make some interesting loops on my Akai Headrush. If you don't know anything about circuit bending, just type it into Youtube and have a look. I thought I was weird but some of these guys making this stuff are positivley mental!

What I did find that really excited me this week was a site I found that is related to circuit bending. It's a small collective of very clever guys who make stunning pieces of synth type equipment. They are sheer works of art as they stand, housed in lovely old cases with lots of copper plates, big old knobs, lights etc and they make some really cool sounds. Have a look at their site and see what I mean. http://www.folktek.com/