STICK

The Stick

The Stick or ‘Chapman Stick’, is named after it’s creator Emmett Chapman and is a fretboard tapping instrument designed specifically as a musical instrument to enhance the techniques for playing music by tapping the strings to create sound instead of plucking, strumming or bowing as is done with harps, guitars or instruments like the cello. Of course you can use those techniques but because the Stick is suspended in space several inches away from the body with a special belt hook, the hands are free to approach the instrument from both sides, thus the name;”free hands technique”. The Stick is held at a close to vertical position with the hands ergonomically positioned so that all ten fingers can engage the strings without the need to support the instrument. From the players perspective this is revolutionary.
The word “tapping” to describe the playing technique is just part of the story and only partially
accurate. The movement is not just raising the fingers and bringing them back down in the same way that I am typing this sentence. Rather, with the Stick, the arms are engaged with the movement in such a way that there is some comparison to bowing a cello. Another metaphor from the perspective of playing is that holding the Stick engages the whole body and is very much like dancing with a partner.

What I truly love about this instrument is that it is so new. Yes, the Stick is a member
of the chordophone family (stringed instruments) but only became available to players in 1974.
It should be noted that the guitar’s origins can be traced back to the 15th century therefore
the Stick is very new indeed and it is related specifically to the electric and bass guitar. But the innovations in both design and playing technique transcend the individual instruments by focusing them onto a single fretboard. To play in both registers at the same time is admittedly challenging and comparable to playing the piano but of more interest to me is that there is no repertoire for this instrument. The expectation of how it will sound and what can be played is completely open. It is inspiring to me just to contemplate that the music for The Stick has yet to be established. Even more curious is where, ‘out there’ is that stuff?

Tapping The Undiscovered Self

The strings on The Stick are alive in a way that the keys of the piano cannot, by design, ever be. The mechanism of striking the string to produce sound is essentially similar to the action of the hammer inside the piano, but being replaced by the finger tip itself striking the string directly. The strings vibrate and pulse underneath the fingers when they connect the frets and wood or aluminum, or graphite as Sticks are made of various materials and the musician is at the interface of the instrument in a way that is modern, electric and ergonomic but rooted in the organic and ancient.

Underneath or at the inverse of the manifold is the profound discovery that music is there like an endless river that gives of itself to manifest in time and space as sonic architecture…