Howdy.

I am a retired drummer - 30 years on the road playing blues, r&b, rock, and so forth. My era was the 80s through the early 2000s, so I’m pretty familiar with the Stick. I’ve always been a huge Tony Levin and Nick Beggs fan. I was even on the road with a bass player for a couple of years who would bring a Stick on the road with him - and I got to try it out a few times. In fact, I’m currently trying to find out if he might want to sell it!

I took piano lessons as a kid and played guitar and bass (poorly) in my teens, so there may actually be some melodic capability beneath my thick drummer’s skull.

These days my gigs are limited to a few road dates with old friends here and there and local djembe/hihat small club duos… I practice for my own enjoyment will probably be getting back into teaching private lessons soon.

I am looking to add the Chapman Stick to my musical pursuits.
Trying to decide which way to go, instrument-wise. It seems like the 10 string original is sort of the middle and the best jumping off point - but I see a guy on here selling a Purpleheart Grand… maybe that’s biting of more than I can chew?

Although, practicing a technique is something with which I have years of experience - I’m certainly only a beginner in terms of the instrument itself…

Thanks!

Johnny

I'd say ten strings! The "Stick" design is all about maximum music using minimum means.

Still waiting for "the trend", for drummers to find their "way in" and transfer their considerable drum solo skills over to string percussion (plus long sustain).

I've had some amazing first-try Stick sessions by drummers visiting here. The incredible body math is there and in quad (dividing each hand into two halves for the quad). From there, it's about distances between the hands and between the fingers of each hand. Certain lucky 2-hand positions give you instant modal and scalar harmony. Also, considering each hand separately, fingers spaced 2 and 3 frets apart generally produce more consonance than when spaced 1 fret apart.

I would show this starter method to any drummer who was interested, usually a band member and friend of the main guy, the guitarist or bass player who came for a hands-on trial and possible purchase. Often the drummer would play circles around his friend, then in effect say, "Naah", and walk away.

I never teach consecutive notes by the same finger at a given fret and instead advocate "false fingering" for those repeated notes. I've observed that most drummers, OTOH, defy this concept, using their fingers like drumsticks. Well, so much for purity of method. Instrumental connections have the priority.

Do what you do well and the modifications will come later.

Hi Johnny.

Some of your background parallels my own, I'm a drummer of 42 years. Nice to get Emmett as a first response a well, hey?!

If you're new to the community, welcome! Some people, myself included, come in and out of this forum and don't always post. It's still the best online community I've come across.

My two cents. Ask yourself what you most like about the stick and then get an instrument to support that.

I would say as a crazy first idea, that you consider Dual Bass Reciprocal (DBR) as a drum friendly stick. The lower pitch orientation is also very rich and exciting. Having said that, I bought my stick as a 10 string classic graphite XG at a time when Emmett was playing that a lot. I just felt if it was good enough for him.....

10 string grand could be another good choice. If you want that original sound don't forget that the stickup is the original DNA of stick and shouldn't be overlooked. From memory stickup and 10 string grand aren't a compatible config, unfortunately.

Things change and the instrument has evolved considerably even in the 11 years that I've been playing. Research is half the fun and being aware of the total pallete of instruments that SE offers, is worthy pursuit in itself.

Lettuce snow what you decide.

Thanks for the great replies - responding individually via PM...
I am really looking forward to getting started - I'll be keeping up with eBay and the used equipment listings here and at Stick Enterprises, hoping something pops up...

To me the closest analog in drumming is the tabla, where each hand is multilateral. This means
There is rhythmic motion within the hand as well as between the hands.

This motion informs my playing to a great degree, beyond simply combining fingers.

Welcome!

gimakas59, welcome... and I'm brand new here as well....
I mused about buying a Stick for a good ten years, then last September I saw an Ironwood from the mid 1980s for sale thru S.E. and jumped on it.
But then I shyed away, I felt I was not good enough - even though I've been playing bass since 1982 in every imaginable tuning under the sun.
I also questioned the loss of dexterity in my left hand, my fingers do work, just not real fast like they used too.
But then I decided I'd go with that same Ironwood only to find out that S.E. had sold it.
Then, I mused about either a new or used 10 string Railboard as I somehow came to believe this would be the right path to go.
My logic was coming from playing and owning both an L-2 prototype and XL 2, also XP 2 Steinberger basses, again tuned all differently than fourths....
So, when a used Railboard presented itself this past March, I jumped on it only to be told that it had already sold.
By this point I was beginning to wonder if the kind and gentle souls at Stick Enterprises even liked me, as the email exchanges were quite long on my end - anyhow with the Railboard sold, I started to re-think things.
Somewhere along the line a modified Toneweaver - with a peg/ebony block installed on the back of the body so it could be played like a cello presented itself, and while I probably paid way more than I should have, since it was tuned in major 3rds and came with all kinds of interesting hand written formulas and calculations regarding string tension gauges etc... for every single note combination out there - this I found to be very valuable, as I consider myself an experimental musician coming out of the early 1980s downtown NYC music scene.
*But I still longed for a Stick....
I recently watched a King Crimson concert from 1994, and I could not believe how on fire Trey Gunn was playing his Stick... it was beyond belief.
One day I listened to all of Discipline and it clicked: I need to follow my original path and find an Ironwood and just go for it, which I did last week, and which arrived here yesterday.
So, where I am going with this is give it some serious thought, think about the style of music which you will be playing, and perhaps consider what some musicians that you like are using, and if you see yourself going down that path.
Buying a Stick to me is a major lifechanging experience, and in retrospect I am so glad that things went the way they did over the past 6 or 7 months in my quest to buy a Stick, because in the end - I got exactly the Stick of my dreams, an Ironwood made in April of 1986
So take your time, and don't fall into dispair if the Stick you want someone beats you too, because it will allow for more time to really consider what instrument would truly suit you best, of which there is no right answer for - although my opinion: I value simplicity, hence why I wanted an older Ironwood.
I also love the tone of those instruments, and love the fact that they are 10 strings and 34 in scale.
Good Luck, may you too find the instrument of your dreams which will serve you well for many years to come.

Big George Waters,

I had a similar experience to you. I was walking thru the park in Maui and heard some very cool music. I tracked it down and found Michael Kollwitz playing the Chapman Stick. I had no idea what this instrument was, but I knew that I had to have one. I bought Michael's CDs and we exchanged email addresses. I tried to buy one of Michael's Sticks on eBay. I won the auction but lost the purchase because I was Canadian. Michael didn't know anything about how eBay was setup and apologized.

I lost several other opportunities to purchase a Stick, but eventually I expanded my search by typing "kijiji Chapman Stick" every day on Google. One day, a fellow in Kingston calling himself the Happy Chef, had post one for sale. It took me a while to convince him to ship it to me, but I finally got my first Stick. It was made in 1978, of a Brazilian hardwood called Angico/Angica. It reminds me of a Tiger's Eye gem when cleaned up with Watco Danish Oil. I loved the color and feel of this instrument but the strings were worn out and setup in a strange layout.

I spent a lot of time messing around with strings until I found my sound. This is now my favorite Stick. I later bought a used Railboard from a local seller. I like the action of the Railboard, but I love the tone of the vintage Stick even more. I'm feeding both of these instruments directly into a pair of vintage Roland JC-120s. I believe that once I put together another amp system, the Railboard will become my favorite. The JC-120 is not a bass amp, but on the vintage Stick it sounds great.
https://www.roland.com/global/products/jc-120/

I bet !!
Yes, getting a Stick is one thing, then figuring out how to properly amplify it is a whole 'nother topic worthy of further discussion, of which I believe a thread already exists elsewhere here....

Thanks for the replies!
Sounds like there are many musicians who have the same experience: blown away by the stick at one point in time, deciding to jump in years later...
I know acoustic drums, bass drum mics, and drum machines from the 80s - and that is the extent of my gear-physics-knowledge!
The staggering amount of information that bass and guitar players have about frets, wood, strings, pickups, truss rods, etc etc seems pretty intimidating to me. Fortunately, the guy who made my cymbals is also a luthier, and many of my buddies from my Nashville days are guitar geniuses, so I’ll be deferring to my panel of experts as I try to find one to buy and figure out how to set it up, tune it up and all that stuff....