There are a lot of do-it-yourself instruments out there, especially in the realm of American folk music, and All Around This World loves every single one of them. If you really forced us to choose favorites…we’d still choose every single one. If you REALLY forced us to choose a favorite, we may be inclined to choose the “musical saw.” A “musical saw,” or singing saw, is, well, a saw. You take a saw, take a bow, and bend the saw as you bow it. When you play it right, it sounds otherworldly, like a theramin. When you play it wrong, it sounds, well, like a saw.
Tag Archives | do it yourself
The Most Beautiful Homemade Guitars
Some time in the 1840’s, American cigar companies began to pack their cigars not in large, bland crates but in small, highly adorned boxes. Some time about ten minutes later, some fellow sitting on a back porch thought to himself, “hey, I could make a guitar out of this!” A cigar-box guitar is, not shockingly, a guitar that uses a cigar box as its body. Shockingly, cigar-box guitars can be exceptionally beautiful. Those who craft well can make the guitar sound fantastic and look even better. In this video we hear a cigar-box guitar that sounds great. If you want to see cigar-box guitars that sound great are works of beauty, start with Snowden guitars. If you want to see cigar-box guitars that may or may not sound great but are certainly cool to see, search ’em up as made by the fine craftsfolk at Etsy.
How Low can your Gutbucket Go?
The “washtub bass,” otherwise known as a “gutbucket,” is a glorious do-it-yourself instrument, a stand-up bass fashioned from a metal washtub — used as the “resontor” — and some sort of stick to serve as the neck. Most washtub basses are simple, one-stringed instruments, easy to make, easy to play, and easy to love. The washtub bass has been a staple of the American DIY folk music scene since the late 1800s, and became especially important when African-American “jug bands” became all the rage in the early 1900s. In the 1950s British “skiffle” bands took the instrument to heart, fashioning their resonators from tea chests. Wikipedia reminds us that not only Americans can fashion a bass from a tub, sharing several different names the instrument has accumulated worldwide depending on its resonator — “gas-tank bass”, “barrel bass”, “box bass” (Trinidad), “bush bass” (Australia), “babatoni” (South Africa), “tanbou marengwen” (Haiti) “tingotalango” (Cuba), “tulòn” (Italy), “laundrophone” and others. (All Around This World still prefers gutbucket.)
Don’t have a Gee-tar? Make it yourself.
We did it! Three months ago, when we began our deep dive into the music of United States and Canada, we may have thought to ourselves, with a chuckle, “this music is a treat, what with all the jazz and blues and hip hop and all, but are we really going to learn anything new?” The answer…….OF COURSE! Though for our last week of this North American, let’s try something different. American and Canadian musicians are darned resourceful. When we have an instrument in hand, we play it. When we don’t have an instrument in hand…we make an instrument out of what we have lying around the house, then we play IT. This week let’s take a tour of homemade instruments that Americans and Canadians have used to make the world sing.
