Open A Tuning for 3 String Cigar Box Guitar

This week, I will cover the Open A tuning for a 3-string CBG. I just built an Open A tuned Cigar Box Guitar for my youngest son which I will use to teach him songs. Before I can teach him I need to get the fretboard layout and some scales mapped to help me out.

The first song I plan to teach him is one of his favourites, Little Ghost, by The White Stripes. The CBG is tuned to Open A which means that playing this will be super easy. The song has 3 chords, A, D and E. To play those, we just need to play the strings open for A, then 5th fret for D and 7th fret for E. Here is a bit of it with me playing solo on the new CBG.

The thing to remember with these open tunings is that you can look at the note on the top string (in the diagrams below) and that is the note you are playing when you fret all 3 strings at the given fret. So for example:

• Open = A (nothing fretted)
• 2nd Fret = B
• 5th Fret = D
• 8th Fret = F
• etc.

This is why open tunings are loved by slide players. You can hit all the notes without fingering if you desire. To get other chords like minors, 7ths, etc, you are going to need to finger the strings. But for my purposes to teach the note circle and the importance of frets to my son, slide playing will do.

Fretboard Notes

For reference, here are the whole notes laid out on the 3 string guitar.

Legend for my Diagrams

A Major Scale

Here's what the A Major Scale sounds like on the high A string (the one on the top of the diagram).

A Minor Pentatonic Scale

Here's what the A Minor Pentatonic Scale sounds like on the high A string (the one on the top of the diagram).

A Blues Scale

Remember, the Blues Scale is more of a roadmap. Take the Minor Pentatonic Scale and sprinkle in some of the Major Scale and see what works. Not every note on here is going to work but think of this as the options you have when working with the Blues.

Here's what the A Blues Scale sounds like on the high A string (the one on the top of the diagram).

Cigar Box Guitar #2

My 5 year old is really into my instrument building and he wants to be just like Dad. He has also been asking for a guitar for a long time.

At first I wanted to jump in and get him a guitar but I know kids; who's interest can quickly wane. So last year we tried music lessons. He did not have the attention span for it and so he did not get a guitar last year.

Flash to the last few months and I have started building various stringed instruments. With that and all the guitar playing I have been doing he has been wanting a guitar again.

First I built a Diddly Bow with him, which he played on and off. That worked out well so I built the Canjo with him (a Diddly Bow with a can at the end to resonate the strings). He loved that.

So, with that it was time to build him a Cigar Box Guitar. We built about 50% of it together on Saturday, planing, sanding, and drilling together. Then on Sunday I finished it off for him.

A trip to the Music Store to get some soft acoustic strings and now he has a Open A tuned Cigar Box Guitar. This will work well since I plan to teach him "Little Ghost" by The White Stripes as his first song.

Why that song? He loves the lyrics, knows it almost by heart, and it only needs 3 chords (A, D, E). With the Open A CBG that means he can strum open for the A, then the 5th fret for D, and the 7th fret for E. The beauty of the open tuning being that to fret the strings at the 5th and 7th he can use the slide to fret all 3 at the same time. So he can do less fingering at first and instead start to learn about the note circle (A, Bb, B, C, C#, D, Eb, F, F#, G, G#) and how frets work.

To play with the slide though I needed something small enough for his 5 year old pinky finger. So, we went to Home Depot for some copper pipe (tried on for size so we bought the correct diameter) and then I got to building him a custom slide. Those chords should be easy to hit with the copper slide I made for him. Here's the slide being built:

To build the slide I just used a hacksaw to cut one long enough to fret the 3 strings on his CBG, then used a precisions filing kit to file the large hunks of metal, and finally finished the cut ends with some 320 sandpaper. The slide is nice and smooth and a perfect fit for his finger.

So, now we will begin working on learning what frets are and finding the 2 that he needs for Little Ghost.

But first, Dad has to mark the frets. I am going to need to hold off on that one though since he won't let anyone else touch it at the moment. It is his!

I adjusted the height of this CBG so that it was lower to make playing
chords easier when not playing an open chord.

With this 2nd CBG completed I now have my sights set on building a Cigar Box Uke (Ukelele) and a Cigar Box Bass. The Bass will be interesting since I will be investigating Piezo Pickups in the bridge. Not sure how to do that yet.

The Cigar Box Uke is another for fun build I want to do. The idea was to give it to my youngest but now that he has his CBG, just like Dad, I think the Uke will become a family instrument. That way anyone can play it. He seems so partial to the CBG.

I love that there are no rules with CBG. I needed something to hold the
rope "strap" on so a U-shaped nail filled in at the time.

My youngest does not really like the sound of the CBG plugged in due to it's grainy Piezo Pickup. I think that will be fixed once I get the Boss Super Overdrive pedal which I tried out in the guitar store but have not purchased yet. So, at the moment he does not want an electric pickup in his CBG but now that he knows how I build them (participating and watching a huge amount of the work) he said, "Later I might want to plug it in, so you can add that later for me."

This little hobby started as a way to try out a cheap instrument but has turned into a fun way to teach my kids about creating and building. They are really into the fact we are building instruments and can play songs on them.

Who could ask or anything more?

Cigar Box Guitar: Open D Tuning for 3 String CBG

This week, I will cover the Open D tuning for a 3-string CBG. Last week I covered the Open G tuning for 3 string CBG.

While at a workshop from Michael "Hawkeye" Herman, he mentioned that as a Blues Slide player we should concentrate on the Open G and the Open D tunings. Those are the two most common and though a lot of songs are listed as E or Open E he thinks tuning to Open E puts too much strain on your guitar and risks breaking your neck.

So, to map an Open E song to one of these tunings, you could tune to Open D and put your capo on the 2nd fret so that you are not playing in the key of E.

Fretboard Notes

D Major Scale

And here is what that sounds like on the high D string, the D' on the top above.

D Minor Pentatonic Scale

And here is what the D Minor Pentatonic Scale that we will build the Blues Scale on sounds like, again on the high D string (D' on the top string above):


D Blues Scale

Again see how the Blues Scale is made up of the Minor Pentatonic and has the additional (greynotes below) from the Major Scale that can be used in a blues song. As well, the Blues Notes in this scale is the G#/Ab.

And finally, our D Blues Scale, which again, like the G Blues Scale, has a lot of notes. Remember that the grey notes are from the D Major Scale and are there for embellishment when they sound good. If they don't sound good drop them. That's what I was taught.


Note:
Here is the legend for my diagrams.

Cigar Box Guitar: Open G Tuning for 3 String CBG

I am starting a new series of posts where I share information about Cigar Box Guitar (CBG) playing. Be that tunings, scale diagrams, classic riffs I pickup, or other such information that may help you learn to play CBG as well.

I know I pick up a lot of information from YouTube videos but I also like to have some of the information I use for practice written down so I can refer to it as I am learning a new tuning, scale, or riff.  I plan to post these on a regular basis (aiming for one a week at the moment) as I work on learning to play the CBG.

Based on the information in this post I experimented with the G Blues Scale on the 2nd and 3rd frets of my Open G tuned CBG and came up with this little riff:


Ok, let's get to it. This week, I will cover the Open G tuning for a 3-string CBG, using the tuning G D G' (from lowest to highest pitch).

So, what is an Open tuning? Well, they are neat in that when you strum all the strings you are playing a chord. In the case of Open G you are playing a G chord.

Now why is this useful? For a slide guitar player this means that you can easily play chords as a barre chord across all the strings. Meaning, you can play chords without having to finger the strings.

Now, to make things more interesting you will want to do some fingering of the strings but in the case of the fret diagram below, you can make reference to the top string (highest pitch) G'. If you strum all 3 strings open, that is no slide or fingers on any strings, you are playing a G.

Fretboard layout for Open G tuning (G D G')

Next put a slide on or make a barre chord across the 3 strings at the 2nd fret. Play that and you just played an A chord. And so on like so:

• 4th fret = B chord
• 5th fret = C chord
• 7th fret = D chord
• 9th fret = E chord
• 10th fret = F chord
• 12th fret = G chord (back to the G chord and we repeat).

So, for a slide player, open tunings are an easy way to play chords without needing to finger complex chord shapes. As a CBG player, I plan to play mostly open tunings since I like to use a slide.

A note on my diagrams:

G Major Scale
Let's start with the G Major Scale on the 3 string Open G tuning. This will be useful later for our G Blues Scale. So let's have a look at it on it's own.

Ok, well that is what the scale looks like but what does it sound like? Here I am doing a run up the notes on the high G' string (the one on the top in the diagram) on my CBG.

G Minor Pentatonic Scale
Next, as we build on our scales and work towards a Blues Scale we will look at the G Minor Pentatonic Scale. This scale is built on by the Blues Scale so you can get into improvisation which is close to a blues scale with just this scale.

Again, what does this sound like? More Blues to me than the Major that is for sure. The Minor scale is also described as sounding sad.


G Blues Scale
A blues scale is a little harder to nail down. The "Blues Scale" is actually several different scales depending on the style of music you are playing and personal preference. So I am going to pick one and show that.

I am using the Minor Pentatonic Scale with the addition of 2 Blues Notes and the additional notes from the Major Scale highlighted in grey (more about those in a moment).

And lastly, our Blues scale we are working with. Again on the top G' string above. Now this one is a little weirder due to the extra blues note and the grey Major Scale notes. More about that after the "scale" since it is less a scale as it is a palette of notes to work with. To hear the number of notes used on the single string, I went faster on the descending scale so you can hear the almost continuous half tones used in blues. There are few notes that are not used in the Blues as you can see above.



A thing to note about the Blues Scale is that it is alright to experiment and add in Major Scale notes as well. Depending on the the given key you are playing in, the addition of some major notes will work, but others may not. Hence, to open your options you can try adding in major scale notes as well. If it sounds good then it is good. Else, don't use the additional notes.

Try the three scales on an CBG tuned to Open G. You should hear the brightness of the Major Scale, the sadness of the Minor Pentatonic, and the blues sound in the Blues Scale. Admittedly you'll want to limit your Blues Scale playing to less notes but you have more to work with here.

Happy experimenting with scales on your CBG.

Note: I am not a music theory expert. I am putting this together for my own learning and as such I thought I would share. If you see a mistake then by all means contact me and let me know.