Chapman Stick

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Image:10 string Chapman Stick.jpg The Chapman Stick is a musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. He set out to create an instrument designed for the tapping technique and the first production model of the Chapman Stick was shipped in 1974.

Superficially, it looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar with 8, 10 or 12 strings mounted on it, but it is considerably longer than a guitar fretboard. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings, rather than plucking them. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by striking the strings against the fingerboard just behind the appropriate frets for the desired notes. For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than most other stringed instruments, making it more comparable to a keyboard instrument than to other stringed instruments. This arrangement lends itself to playing multiple lines at once and many Stick players have mastered performing bass, chords and melody lines simultaneously.

1 Construction
2 Models
3 Musicians using the Chapman Stick
4 Compare with
5 External links

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Construction

Over the years, Chapman Sticks have been made out of many materials. The first ones were made from super hardwoods, most from ironwood, but some from ebony and other exotic woods, through the early 1980s. The next group, chronologically, were made from a polycarbonate resin similar to Plexiglass through the early 1990s. Today, they are made from many hardwoods (including padauk, purple heart, Indian rosewood, tarara, maple and mahogany), as well as graphite epoxy and other even more high-tech composites.

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Models

There are six different models of the Chapman Stick:

Classic (10 strings, 5 melody + 5 bass)
Grand Stick (12 strings, 6 melody + 6 bass)
Stick Bass (8 strings, 4 melody + 4 bass or an undivided bass guitar-like tuning)
NS/Stick (8 strings set up up for plucking, strumming, or tapping; co-invented by Chapman & Ned Steinberger)
Stick XG (a variation on traditional Stick construction, made from structural graphite, continuous strand carbon fiber and with one extra fret)
Alto Stick (10 strings, 5 melody + 5 bass, with shorter scale length for a more guitar-like range)

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Musicians using the Chapman Stick

Chapman Sticks have been used on many popular music recordings, particularly to play the bass parts. Popular artists who have used the Chapman Stick on their recordings and live performances include Peter Gabriel, King Crimson, Liquid Tension Experiment (in all three instances played by Tony Levin), Kittyhawk (with multiple Stick players), Nick Beggs (Kajagoogoo, John Paul Jones), Pink Floyd, Blue Man Group, Anderson Bruford Wakeman Howe (one of the reformations of the group Yes, once again featuring Tony Levin), Bruce Cockburn, Greg Howard on the Dave Matthews Band album Before These Crowded Streets, John Myung of Dream Theater (more specifically in the album Falling Into Infinity), Trey Gunn with King Crimson, Don Schiff, Aaron Wolf of Darktown Saints, Sean Malone of Cynic and Gordian Knot, and Blue Quarter.

Ex-Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson was among the first musicians to introduce the Chapman Stick to the public. He would use the instrument on a couple of songs on Weather Report's Black Market album.

Recordings that have been influential on many Stick players, because the Stick plays such a prominent role, include the 1981 King Crimson album Discipline and Emmett Chapman's 1987 album Parallel Galaxy.

The Chapman Stick also made a (slightly disguised) appearance in David Lynch's film, Dune as Gurney Halleck's baliset, though the scene was removed from the theatrical version and can only be seen in the various extended versions of the film. The piece being played in the scene is from Emmett Chapman's album Parallel Galaxy.

Also, Wayne Lytle, creator of Animusic, commented that on his piece "Stick Figures", he had the inspiration for the bass guitar character from the Chapman Stick.

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