Greetings everyone my name is Charles and I just purchased my first Stick from eBay. It is an older model and I am having a ton of buyers remorse as well as concern over whether I should have purchased something newer from Stick.com.

I have played guitar and bass for many years and I have dreamed of owning a Stick since I was 16 (46 now). I am self-taught on both bass and guitar and I need a lot of guidance and input as to how to go about learning the Stick.

I have done a ton of reading over the years and I am not certain about what tuning is best for beginners, everyone has their own opinions and I haven't formed an opinion yet.

The other problem is that I do not read music or know chords or note names even (I am primarily a bass player and haven't played guitar for years) so I am really starting an uphill climb. I want... no... need to learn to play the Stick and hopefully play it well enough so that I can start making my own music with it.

So, please good people, make all the suggestions you want to make... I am an open book and ready to absorb whatever people tell me... but be gentle... I am a Stick virgin and this is my first time ever.

Oh... one other thing... Tony Levin is my favorite bass player and he is the one that got me interested in the Stick. I would love to know what effects he uses to get the sound that he gets.

Another other thing... I do not have a stereo amp, anyone know where I can get a stereo to mono cord as I do not have one yet.

Did you get the stereo cable? What pickup do you have? If it's a PASV-4 it has a mono/stereo switch on the right side (when you're wearing the Stick), set it to mono and plug the melody side (blue plug).

Or just get a stereo-to-mono adapter at any electronics store, they ought to have a stereo-to-mono converter.

I am also new to the Stick, got mine in May, and 3 months later I can't play a song yet (well just one but it's dead easy and I don't count it) but I'm left handed so I've had some extra difficulty with the bass side.

I strongly advice you to get some music lessons. Without even knowing chords, scales, or even where the notes are and the relationships between them, you have not been taking full advantage of any of your instruments, and IMO that knowledge is fundamental for playing the Stick, especially if you use different tunings (5ths in bass, 4ths in melody). Without some music background you won't even know what that 4ths/5ths stuff is about and what the difference is between the bass and melody side; why there is a certain symmetry to the chords in both sides, the correspondence of the notes between both sides, etc etc.

I studied classical guitar for a year, then moved on to electric guitar and kept on studying music theory by myself; then moved to bass but now for the first time in my life I'm taking bass lessons and it's a big difference between teaching yourself and having someone who guides you. I'm taking bass lessons from a player who does a lot of polyrhythmic stuff and tapping on the bass, he also plays Warr guitar and we're focusing on techniques that will be useful on the Stick (lots of interdepence and indepence exercises, polyrhythms, etc). But now I'm also getting to know the bass on a whole different level, learning new techniques and different ways of playing scales, basic triads, etc.

Greg Howard and Steve Adelson give Stick lessons over Skype, but I guess you'd have to know at least some music theory to really take advantage of that.

Meanwhile, you can familiarize yourself with where the notes are on the Stick, depending on the tuning you use, using this page:

http://www.thedesignloophole.com/STICK/

I went with Matched Reciprocal BTW. I like having that low C available on the bass side even if I seldom use it; it makes the D more easily reachable. And I like the correspondence between the melody and bass strings; the only problem I've found is that when you want to play the same chords on both sides your hands overlap and it's more difficult to play.

Coming here is a good start. Take some Skype lessons. Steve and Greg can both start from the ground up. You'll progress faster with direct lessons. I've been playing for 11 years and just started taking lessons with Steve 9 months ago. Lots of knowledge online. Have fun and congratulations!

Samson

Welcome!

Don't be discouraged, I've had my Stick for over 2 years now and I'm still VERY much a beginner. Sometimes when I practice I think all I'm doing is making noise, not real music at all. Yet it's always FUN, and I've never had any regrets about buying the thing. I just enjoy noodling about, making cool (to me anyway) sounds, fun little melodies and bass lines etc. No hurry, no problem.

There's plenty of good learning material available. Books, DVD's, Skype lessons etc. It's all remarkably affordable and I don't think you can go wrong with any of it. I assume you've seen Bob C's free lesson website?

http://sticklessons.com/videos.html

Just keep tapping and congratulations on selecting a wonderful instrument.

Hi Charles,

The Stick is actually a very good instrument to learn how music works, because the tuning is uniform, so patterns repeat in regular ways, just move the chord shapes around.

If you can make it down to Charlottesville sometime, bring your instrument and I can make sure it's st up properly and show you some basics.

You may want to post some pics of the bridge, etc to reveal whether the setup is correct.
does it have an adjustable truss on the back?

The important thing is to have fun. Just start exploring.

Hi FClef,

I'm on my second year as a Stick player and just love the instrument. It has already become what I reach for when going out to play a concert (if not specifically called to play another instrument). Like Greg said, the layout of the Stick tuning is very logical. In fact, it does tempt me to start tuning my guitars in all fourths too - but I haven't done that yet ) What I did before I started playing the STick was to imagine normal melodies and chords that I would use if just improvising a little and then I checked out exactly where on the two fretboards the notes I would need are located in all tunings. This mind game led me to the decision to start with Matched Reciprocal tuning. I've recently tried Classic but repelled back to MR, it simply fits me best.

One might think that it will be a benefit to not use a mirrored strings layout for the bass side, only because "it would be more like a guitar or bass that way", but I think that kind of thinking misses an important point with the Stick: that it is an exciting and inspiring instrument in its own right. It took about a week to get into the mirrored bass side and then all kind of new possibilities opened up, I found new cool ways of voicing the chords thanks to the mirrored 5ths bass side. Give it a try and see where it pulls you!

As for Tony Levin's "use of effects" I've heard on recordings that he sticks with the Stickup pickup model and his bass lines, at least with King Crimson, are quite compressed too.

Hi Charles,
TLev gets a huge variety of tones from his Stick but I believe his most commonly used effects are compression, phaser and octaver.
Those (plus eq) are what I use on my HD500 when I want to indulge in a bit of Solsbury Hill

Have fun!

James

Hi Charles,

After dreaming about owning a Chapman stick for years I finally bought a used older ten string model about a year and a half ago. I initially had some buyer's remorse but I'm happy to say I'm over that now. Way over it.

I love this instrument and am extremely happy that I purchased it. At first I had a hard time getting any volume out of it but I found out that that was because I had an arch in the neck. Once I tightened the truss rod a little bit with the included wrench my sound improved dramatically.

I can't stress the importance of a good setup enough. See Greg Howard's online article about stick setup.

Regarding stereo to mono I would stay away from those cheap adapters at Radio Shack. They tend to add hum, take away from your tone, and break.

I use an inexpensive stereo to two mono output cord you can buy at any music store. In the near future I will be purchasing a cord from Stick Enterprises because I get a little bit of cross talk between the melody and stereo side.

I personally like to plug into an amp with two channels. I use the Acoustic AGS 120 now but I'm looking at the Roland KC-110 as a practice amp. I also like classic tuning.

As far as music theory goes, start out learning the note names on the neck. Then try a G, C and D chord at a comfortable location on the neck. Then add Am, Bm, Em and Fdim for a complete chord scale. Then learn to play around the circle of fifths. Search around on Google a bit and you'll find this theory (but probably not Stick specific).

Keep at it and you'll be rewarded. You've made a good choice in choosing the Chapman stick as your main instrument.

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These are pictures of the Stick I bought. They are from the auction and not while in-hand... I have to wait for Tuesday for that.

Anyway, OK... so If I am to understand everyone it would appear that the classical tuning is the best simply because the teaching materials out there are basically all written for classical tuning?

I failed to mention that I am not completely music theory ignorant, it has been a very, very long time since I have had to use it so it is either very dusty or non-existent in my brain. Basically I have to start from scratch.

Greg, I may actually take you up on your offer to help me get started. I will contact you in PM if you don't mind.

As far as the cord goes, I will look for something that is going to work for the time being until I get a little playing time in... if it means the cheap Radio Shack adapter that is a $2 expense that I can endure .

I am still kind of confused about how to run this thing through an amp so I get the benefit of its true set up. Any suggestions? I mean, I can buy another amp if need be, but it needs to be kind of compact and something that I can carry on my own without a hand truck.

OK, that is all for now. Thanks for the great suggestions... keep them coming please!

#479 - that's cool! What beautiful wood!

Get a second amp so you can bring out both sides with a little different sound. There's a lot of fun in Stick playing from combining both outputs playing patterns and chords spanning both sides.

Or pick up some dual channel amp or preamp. Over here I just bought a little Roland Cube Street for practicing. It is very good as long as you are fine with the two sides sounding rather different. For a clean bass side and a little overdrive on the melody it is a great practicing amp.

For a really good concert sound I use a laptop system that includes a good audio interface. A good solution if you also want to do a lot of recording and experiment with a lot of alternative sound ideas.

I noticed that I can also practice on my tube top + cabinet guitar stack (mono) if I use a guitar cable and don't inject it fully into the Stick. At one point the sound of both sides come out fine in mono.