5 Classroom Guitar Hacks

If you’re starting a guitar program on a budget, you’re not alone. How do you buy guitars, store them, give your kids picks every 5 minutes when they lose them? Where does it end?

It ends when you decide to do some or all of it yourself (or with the help of your handy friend). We always tell teachers that starting a guitar class is inexpensive, but with these guitar hacks your costs can fall precipitously.

TGW Clinician, Traci Bolton shared this classroom hack. She needed a way to store her classroom accessories – a pencil, dry erase marker, erasers and clothes pin for holding books open. This hack allows those items to be stored at each music stand and more! It consists of a hose clamp, conduit holder and some small nuts and bolts to hold it together.

If every quarter counts – and it does for me – then you’re even looking at your guitar picks and thinking, “How do I cut costs?”. Easy: make your own guitar picks! You can use all sorts of materials to make picks and there are a couple of pick punchers on the market. Check out this video and for a review.

What I love about this hack is it’s perfect for your guitar classroom! A wall hanger system lets your students pull guitars off the wall rather than taking them in and out of cases (and having closet space). In particular, this video will show you how to make a multi-guitar wall hanger. If you have 20 or so guitars, you’re not going to want to build one guitar wall hanger at a time (sayonara semester!). You don’t have to make the wood look great like the guy in this video does, but this will get you through 4 guitars at a time!

If only I had a budget to buy guitar stands for my guitar classroom. I could finally tell all the kids to put their guitars down and not worry – especially that kid who’s always noodling! Well, now you can have it all thanks to a little elbow grease and PVC pipe.

I would not recommend giving cigar box guitars to your guitar students basically because it’s, well, not a guitar. However, since you got this far here’s the ultimate test. If you’re going to craft all of these other things yourself, why not make your own guitar – sort of. All you need is a bunch of tools, a piece of wood, a cigar box + some other supplies and a lot of grit! Check out this video and there are more instructions on Art of Manliness and Cigar Box Guitars.

I also know what you’re saying, “That’s not a real guitar!” and you probably shouldn’t have the first cigar box guitar ensemble in the state. But, I’m going to leave you off with a little cigar box music. Food for thought!