Orchard Students Learn To Make Their Own Instruments

Would you like to play guitar, but think it’s too expensive? Think again.

A box, strings, and a piece of wood were all the basic supplies Jordan Schaller needed.

Schaller, a pastoral intern at Grace Lutheran Church in Neligh, taught K-6 students how to make their own instruments at an assembly program at the Orchard Public School on Thursday morning.

“When i was growing up, I played a lot of different instruments,” he told them. “My dad had almost every single instrument you could think of.”

He said his dad collected instruments and taught him to do the same. “So I have a trombone, trumpet, bass guitar, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, a ton of different drums, and then it started getting expensive to buy instruments and I’m poor, so I had to stop,” Schaller said.

Then he remembered seeing a photo in history class. It was a man playing a fiddle or violin made from a cigar box.

“So I thought that might be a better way to collect instruments,” he said. “Maybe I could make one like that out of a box.”

To create a guitar, Schaller used a cigar box, piece of scrap wood, pegs, a door hinge, pencil and guitar strings he had lying around. However, he admitted that it doesn’t sound quite as nice as the $2,000 he purchased.

“So I spent about $7 total with everything and it sounds like a $7 guitar, but it’s still a lot of fun to play,” Schaller said. “I got to thinking if I made cheap guitars, I could make a lot of them because all I needed for that was a stick and a box. So I started thinking, what else could you make a guitar out of? So at home, I have a tennis racket and I put strings on it. So now I can play a tennis racket as a guitar.”

He also showed the kids a drum made from a wooden box and told them, “You can make instruments out of almost anything.”

The Orchard students will have supplies available at school and make some instruments in the coming weeks as part of the Makerspace program, according to teacher Tami Kuhfal. ​