Every year we post about Independence Day here in the US, and how it relates to this amazing instrument we've taken up with. Emmett called his playing method "Free Hands" because the hands were free to explore the board on their own, free from the coordinated action of fretting and striking a string.

He also called it "Free Hands" because of the sensation he got while playing, his ideas streaming through his fingertips and out into the sonic universe. "It felt like flying" he said, and Jim Reilly took that quote for his 2017 article: https://www.stick.com/about/history/rei ... index.html.

That feeling, when everything is just clicking, is organic and exciting. I've been fortunate to have many moments in performance where this has happened. It happened in a big way when I performed "Water on the Moon", (too bad not to have a video of that performance), and I was truly "in the zone" in 2003 at the San Jose Stick Night concert. I get it, Emmett.



The Stick invites us to think about music in new ways, ways that go beyond analogs to guitar, bass keyboards on any other instrument. Each of us has a great opportunity to discover new musical concepts, techniques and our own unique voice, unencumbered by decades of precedential culture and rules about "how it's done." Innovation is freedom. Enjoy your Free Hands...

Thanks for posting greg.

Looking forward to developing some independence To add to my 'routes to independence' I've just this weekend discovered Josh Goldberg's Tap Theory 'Auto-Pilot' exercises.

PS. The youtube page says "If you want a full-res version of this, it's available with my CD "Ether Ore" which is all live solo Stick improvisation". I can see anything matching the track name or length in the track list of my bandcamp based "Ether Ore" download. Is there a difference between that & the CD, or am I missing something obvious?

There's a DVD coming along the CD