Okieinexile's Blog

By Bobby Neal Winters

There is a quote attributed to George Bernhard Shaw that goes: “Those who can do; those who can’t teach.” (Woodie Allen took it further by adding, “Those who can’t teach, teach gym.” That is a whole other can of worms. I am not going to go there.)

I will say this.  I’ve been learning a lot about the art of teaching in my journey of learning how to make various musical instruments.

I’ve recently finished making a working alto recorder.  I had to go back to the drawing board and redo some things, improve some techniques, and concentrate on the problem.  I am now putting that project on the side with the intention of coming back at a later date and prove that making one working recorder wasn’t just an accident.

In the meantime, I’ve taken up a new project: the Cigar Box Guitar. I’ve only been working on this a short time, but in this short time I’ve learned a lot.  I’ve learned a lot not so much about how to make a cigar box guitar, but about the art of teaching.

There are a lot of those who can do, but can’t teach. They can annoy, but they can’t teach.

I won’t mention names or names of the specific Youtube channels. But I will tell you the pattern.  First, these people are very enthusiastic.  They smile; they are happy; they are proud.  They are musicians who’ve tapped into their musical heritage and come upon the cigar box guitar, a musical instrument made by musicians who were too poor or too geographically challenged to buy a guitar, so they made one.

They talk a bit about building the guitar. They talk about the choice of the cigar box.  The various types of cigar boxes.  They might mention putting on the frets, but they won’t tell you how far apart to put the frets.  There are some useful bits here and there, but those useful bits are separated from each other by the teacher breaking out into song.

It’s like being in a damned musical.

Let me be a bit more positive now. I think the problem with the people I am talking about is that they came to the point of building the musical instrument from being musicians.  I’ve come to the point of building a musical instrument from the point of being a woodworker. 

I’m interested in the process of building and learning that craft; they are interested in music in the instrument as a means for pursuing that craft.

I’ve pushed my annoyance to the side and have continued my search for the right teacher.  

I think I’ve found him.

The name of the channel is ChickenboneJohn. He has a long series of detailed videos on how to make a cigar box guitar, and he does teach how to play one as well.  However, he gives me the measurements I need, and his style of teaching gives me the big picture that I need.  He keeps his music as music and his building as building.

And, while he does talk, he doesn’t talk too much.

But the point at which he won me over was when he gave me a way to calculate how far apart to place the individual frets and how to do this calculation in relation to the distance from the “nut” to the “bridge.”

Having disparaged the teachers I found before ChickenboneJohn, let me now apologize.  There is a place for them. I imagine there are people who come upon their videos who don’t know anything about building, but see the enthusiasm coming from them.  They see how happy they are; they see what they can do; they think that maybe, one day, I can do that.

Then they wander off, but the seed is planted.

These people are evangelists. They help convince the student to take a particular path.

They aren’t necessarily much help in getting them very far down that path. They can play a pivotal role.  When the student becomes engaged, when the student decides that they want to learn, then the student either teaches or almost teaches himself.

That being said, there are those who have a talent for organizing a subject in a way that it can be learned and laying it out in a way that makes sense for the student.

So let me go back to the quote I began with and edit it. “There are those who can only do; there are those who can do and make others want to do; there are those who can do in such a way that others can learn from it.”

Bobby Winters grew up near Harden City, Oklahoma.  He teaches mathematics and computer science, does woodworking, and blogs at okieinexile.com.