Chapman Stick - Description and Playing Position

Description and Playing Position

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.

“ ” Steve Adelson describing the Chapman Stick in Guitar Player magazine

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.

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 right (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.