Overture

Emmett Chapman: Keynote Speaker for the 2009 New Music Festival

Feb 28, 2009 1
Posted by music

The keynote speaker for the 2009 New Music Festival is Emmett Chapman, inventor of the Chapman Stick. The following is a brief description of Emmett’s work both as a performer and as an inventor.

     It has been more than thirty years since The Stick was first introduced to the public, and as President of Stick Enterprises, Emmett continues to oversee each production run and personally completes the final set-up of each instrument. In addition to creating the Chapman Stick instruments, Emmett has also had a career as a performer and recording artist. From 1969 to the present, Emmett has done both solo performances and played with many jazz legends. He has done concert tours playing colleges, and has performed throughout the world. In 1985 Emmett released a solo album titled Parallel Galaxy. This recording contained ten pieces, some solos and some duets. The album is available on vinyl, cassette, and was re-mastered for CD in 1999. One piece from the album, Backyard, was used in the film Dune. The director’s cut of the film shows a decorated Stick painted gold playing the role of the mythical “baliset” instrument described in Frank Herbert’s novel. Emmett’s recording is what we hear when we see Patrick Stewart play the “baliset.”

 

In His Own Words

The following is an excerpt from an article in which Emmett describes the stages involved with inventing The Stick, as well as the unique method used to play it.

“I created a new stringed instrument to embody all the advantages of the tapping method I had been playing on guitar. I needed an all-fingerboard instrument, an expanded playing surface of strings and frets with the room and the range to explore two-handed playing to its full extent. At the same time I reduced the design to the essentials, solely for this basic method. A member of the guitar and bass family, The Stick introduced a full two-handed piano technique applied directly onto the strings. It has a longer natural sustain than guitar, and yet is extremely percussive, the “drumming” of fingers executing sharp, staccato rhythms. It also has a strong and distinctive bass voice. And so, the techniques of four major instruments—guitar, piano, bass and drums—are all brought together on this single Touchboard® instrument.”

“The technique came before the instrument, a sudden discovery while playing my guitar in 1969. No known guitarist, bassist, or fingerboard player had ever before used a basic three and four fingered technique in each hand simultaneously to play independent lines, scales and chords. It was unique, yet basic and logical—both hands aligned parallel to the frets and perpendicular to the strings, the fingers of each hand fitting sequentially into selected fret spaces at any point along the board. This is the common orientation of a fingering hand, more or less at right angles to the neck, and has from antiquity been the manner in which pickers, pluckers, and strummers of stringed instruments finger-stopped their notes, usually with the left hand. I dedicated this fingering role to both hands, each addressing the board from opposite sides, and I began to perform, teach, and demonstrate this new method, as well as inventing and manufacturing a new instrument to fully realize its potential.” 



“By 1970 I was playing L.A. clubs with jazz guitarist Barney Kessel, using this light-touch method of independent hands to play simultaneous bass, chords and melody on my modified guitar. Later that year I built a bodiless version out of an ebony board and called it “The Electric Stick.” Refinements of the instrument and the method then evolved together, with my first production run of Sticks in 1974, as well as my first nationally televised Stick performance on What’s My Line that year. Stick Enterprises was founded in 1974 to manufacture and distribute the Stick. Since then we have added many new features and created a variety of related tapping instruments, including 8-, 10-, and 12-string models, an 8-string NS/Stick bass guitar, and related accessories.”

 

How It All Started 



“As a musician, my goal has been to create a new musical language. Improvisation has always been a key element, drawing upon all mainstreams of music, past and present, with the intention to be to communicate in a new way with the audience and the musicians on stage. I began playing guitar in 1959 to back my vocals while I sang in a trio to work my way through college. After listening to Barney Kessel’s guitar trio albums I began the long road as an instrumentalist. From 1959 to 1969 my instrument, the guitar, evolved with my music. To make the kind of instrument I wanted, it was necessary to become an instrument builder and customizer. I made the neck wider, then longer—I added strings, springs, levers, and other novel mechanisms. The purpose of these changes was to allow greater expressiveness; they all worked rather well and I enjoyed using them for about four years, up until I discovered the two-handed playing technique. I then built a rectangular fingerboard with no arch and no taper (a precursor to the fingerboard design on The Stick). I even reversed the three lowest bass strings from fourths going down in pitch to fifths going up in pitch, without changing the letter-named notes.” 



“By the late ‘60s I had taken my guitars, techniques, and music through some 40 major changes. The final guitar had nine strings, including a gear shift for a “wild string.” This was a companion to the high E; by pushing on the gear-shift lever, it was possible to obtain various intervals, from an octave lower than high E (the string’s normal pitch) up to unison high E. Then, one evening in August, 1969, while practicing guitar in my Laurel Canyon Hills studio, a sudden impulse struck from “out of the blue,” and I started to play the full two-handed technique. Realizing the implications this would have for my music sent me leaping around the house in sheer delight.”


 

For more info about Emmett’s music, biography and other interests, please see: www.emmettchapman.net, and look for more information and interviews to be posted on Overture as we near the festival.