Does anybody know or have observed a Stick player with no prior musical training before taking up the instrument? I mean like never played an instrument in their lives. And I don't mean just trying it out once, I mean they have competency on the Stick.

Thanks

I'm curious about why you would ask this question?
I've had no formal training, yet play multiple instruments.

this was the case with me. i would like to think i have some competency, but you can make your own assessment by viewing some of the youtube videos i have posted if you're curious

i think Dale Ladouceur play only stick

also Steffi (from Mark and Steffi) has only played the stick without any previous instrument played

I could be wrong, but IIRC possibly Gene Perry (earthgene)? https://www.youtube.com/c/GenePerry

Edit to add: I was wrong. I knew it was one of the Tap In Time team, but I picked the wrong one. More details a couple of posts further on...

Have no musical experience at all (some stick nitpickers can probably tell).never took a lesson in music or any instrument. zero education.all I ever did was junkyard drumming ,never even owned a drum set. didn't even know if I was left-handed or right handed.streets were mean and poor.Stick looked percussive after I heard a guitar player talking about one.so I laid my money down with nothing to lose.not a musician just a hobbyist having fun.i heard someone say often ;"Happy Tapping"

Well said.

Till around 4 years ago I thought I was a no hoper musically.

I had a pretty good bunch of teachers through my school days so when they said I was tone deaf & thus 'unmusical' I believed them.

It took me till I was nearly 60 years to discover they were wrong!

Then I discovered that no one who loves listening to music (as I always have) can be tone deaf. To the very small percentage of people who really are tone deaf (i.e those who have a medical condition known as Amusia), music essentially comes across as meaningless noise.

Armed with that knowledge I discovered that the reason I couldn't sing in tune was that I'd never picked up that matching pitch was something you could learn to do (provided you don't have Amusia). Previously I'd believed it was a thing that "just happened", but only for certain people. Apparently my teachers believed that too.

That discovery changed everything & I've been catching up ever since.

It's all still very much a work in progress but I can now sing moderately enough that if I say to my wife (who has an excellent 'ear') "You know the song, it goes like this", she can actually tell what I'm trying to sing (the first time that happened was a big day for me). I've also started to learn several instruments.

I discovered Stick about 18 months ago and was lucky enough to find a used one a bit over a year ago. I don't claim to be a player, but I can make increasingly musical noises.

I've not had any formal musical training, or any direct 'lessons'. I've just used books & on-line materials & courses.

My aim is not to impress others, it's just to have fun making music(al noises).

Go on. Try it.

I was vaguely recalling the first Tap In Time Podcast. I now been back & checked. It wasn't Gene, but Victor I was thinking of.

He tells his 'story' from around 15m into the first episode. Stick wasn't 100% his first instrument, he'd made several very short attempts with guitar over the years, but Stick was different and he stayed with it.

I ask because nearly every Stick player I've come across has a guitar, bass, or piano background and you can hear the influence in their playing. I want to hear somebody 100% Stickist



Sound great! Keep up the good work



Thank you very much for this rec, this woman's playing is phenomenal and exactly what I was looking for!

Wow a lot to decompress in this thread.

Michael. I looked for your YouTube but I couldn't find it. I typed your name in full.
Where are the said videos that you have posted?

Sticky fingers, well said. Happy tapping. I think Greg Howard ended just about everything with that phrase. Percussive funness. Training the fingers makes it sound good. I think that Emmett once said, I don't know what notes I'm playing, I look down and find my root note and everything from there is just intervals, maybe not a direct quote but something to that effect. I think that comes into the pattern theory, ie Fourths to Infinity. Basically the same pattern no matter where you go.

David. All I do is make musical noise. I don't want to impress anybody, Something that helped me a lot was singing into my tuner on my phone, trying to match my voice to the chord I was strumming, or to the note I was playing. Then I would try to sing in the third, if I was playing an A, I would try to drone a c sharp in my voice. It helped me a lot, pitchlab is a tuning app I love. You have to dig for it, I even use it to tune my drums.

Dq2. Steffi is awesome. Dale is awesome. RocknRoLL

StIcKsTiCkStUckStickinG