The Chapman Stick (the Stick) is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and has been used on music recordings to play bass lines, melody lines, chords or textures. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can also cover several of these musical parts simultaneously.[1]
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Imagine creating music on a stringed instrument that is simultaneously a guitar, a bass, a piano, and percussion. Add unlimited electronic capabilities and forward-thinking playing techniques for ultimate expression. Now, design a tuning to make navigation of the instrument amazingly simple, and streamline the look and feel for optimal accessibility. This instrument already exists as the Chapman Stick.
A Stick looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar, but with 8, 10 or 12 strings. It is, however, considerably longer and wider 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 some 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.[2]
Typically, the Chapman Stick is held via a belt-hook and a shoulder strap. The player hooks the instrument onto their belt and places their head and left (or the converse in the case of left-handed players) arm through the shoulder strap. The instrument then settles into a position approximately 30 to 40 degrees from vertical, which allows both of the player's hands to naturally and comfortably address the fretboard. (In comparison, a typically held guitar's fretboard is more or less horizontal.) The player then hammers onto the strings with their fingertips in the same way that one would strike a piano key. The technique is very similar to that of piano in as much as the player covers both bass and melody notes together with both hands and each note is struck with one finger of one hand. Typically, one hand plays the melody on the treble strings and the other plays rhythm on the bass strings.
In 1969, jazz guitarist Emmett Chapman developed the "Free Hands" tapping method (in which both hands play parallel to the frets) and applied it to his playing. At the time, Chapman was playing a 9-string long-scale guitar, but decided to design and develop a brand new instrument for use with Free Hands in order to use the method's full potential. The Chapman Stick took five years to design and develop, during which Chapman also opted to set up a business to launch it as a commercially produced instrument. The first production model of the Stick was shipped in 1974 - on October 10 of the same year, Chapman brought his instrument to public attention by demonstrating it on the game show What's My Line?[3]
Former Weather Report bassist Alphonso Johnson was among the first musicians to introduce the Chapman Stick to the public. Top session player Tony Levin was also an early user, and was playing the instrument from the mid-1970s: he would bring it to a high profile on sessions and tours with Peter Gabriel and featured it in his work as a member of King Crimson from 1981 onwards. He would also use it with Liquid Tension Experiment, and in sessions for bands including Pink Floyd and Yes. Recently, Levin formed the band Stick Men, consisting solely of one drummer and two Stick players.
Recordings which have been influential on Stick players (because of the prominent role the Stick plays) include the 1981 King Crimson album Discipline (played by Tony Levin) and Emmett Chapman's own 1985 album Parallel Galaxy. Amy Grant's hit single "Angels" also featured a Stick solo (played by Andy Widders-Ellis).
The Stick made a disguised appearance in David Lynch's film, Dune as Gurney Halleck's baliset, though the scene where Halleck (played by Patrick Stewart) actually plays the instrument was removed from the theatrical version and can only be seen in the extended versions. The piece being played in the scene is a quote from Emmett Chapman's album Parallel Galaxy.
Wayne Lytle, creator of Animusic, commented that on his piece "Stick Figures", he had the inspiration for the semi-anthropomorphic bass guitar from the Chapman Stick.
Chapman Sticks have been made out of many materials. The first were made from hardwoods, most from ironwood, but some from ebony and other exotic woods, through the early 1980s. The next group was made from an injection-molded polycarbonate resin through the early 1990s. Today, they are made from hardwoods (including padauk, Indian rosewood, tarara, maple, wenge and mahogany), other organic materials like bamboo, as well as graphite epoxy and other high-tech composites.
In contrast to the guitar or bass, the Stick is set up with very little relief in the fretboard: i.e., it is very flat, compared to a guitar, which has a slight bow. Combined with a long scale length, somewhat elevated frets, very low string action, and very sensitive pickups, this setup is advantageous to the tapping style of play.
The standard tuning consists of 5 bass strings (6 on the Grand Stick models), tuned upwards in 5ths, with the low string in the middle of the fretboard, and 5 melody strings (6 on Grand Stick), tuned upwards in 4ths, again with the low string in the middle of the fretboard. Tuning configurations may change depending on the player's style; a player playing as a lead instrument will choose an overall higher pitch tuning, with more separation between the melody and bass courses; a player who is playing chordally across the whole instrument will choose a closer relationship between the bass and melody sides, tuned to lower pitch (called "Matched Reciprocal" tuning).
The stringing/tuning configuration of the Chapman Stick is advantageous to the player who wishes to play large, fully voiced chords with close inner note relationships. In contrast to a standard guitar, where one tends to "run out of options" within a particular fingering, the Stick tuning results in up to 4 or even 5 octaves of note choices, under a single fretting position.
The standard tuning shows another advantage as well: The harmonic scale structures typical to western music form very stable, geometric, and "finger-able" patterns, which remain consistent across the whole instrument, facilitating transposition, and also making the instrument easier to learn than is immediately apparent. Also, the bass/melody division allows for microtonal tunings, which makes unusually exotic sounds possible.
The manufacturer's website has more detailed information on tunings.[4]
The Stick is available with passive or active pickup modules. Customized Roland GK-3 pickups are available for the treble or bass side of the instrument, allowing the instrument to drive one or two guitar synthesizers such as the Roland GR-20 or Axon AX-100, and also to drive other MIDI instruments or sequencers chained to the guitar synthesizer. The hammer-on style of playing produces a rising waveform transient that is easily tracked by this type of device.
Standard output is 2 channel, through a TRS 1/4" connector, with bass and melody courses output separately. There are separate volume controls for bass and melody. The ACTV-2 and PASV-4 pickup modules also have mono operation modes.
The Stick can be plugged into any standard guitar or bass amplifier, to good effect. However, because of the very high impedance of the passive pickups, an instrument preamp is often employed, especially for full-range amplification systems (PA, keyboard amps, etc.)
The British musician Nick Beggs has significantly modified a Chapman Stick to a fully MIDI-capable instrument triggering from both bass and melody strings. He has named this modified instrument the "Virtual Stick".
Currently there are seven different models of the Chapman Stick. Some string configurations are mentioned below, but current production models offer any tuning within physical limitations of stringing:
Currently The Stick, Grand Stick and Stick Bass are 36"-scale, but the older production models were 34" scale.
Stick Enterprises has also manufactured some custom and limited-run instruments:
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