OLD MUSIC BIO: intro | early music experience | Musical Shoelaces - 1997 | False Ground - 1998 | *Chapman Stick | Conspiracies & Racketeering - 2000 | college, barbershop & misc | The Closers - 2003-2005 | new music - 2006-and-on
On January 1, 1998 I got my first Chapman Stick. The Stick is a string instrument designed around tapping directly on the strings, thereby the technique is similar to that of a keyboard in many ways.
My teacher, Steve Osburn, was a Stick player, and his store was one of the only dealers in the country. I had a chance to try a used instrument for a few hours in a side room, and I was hooked. Some of the composition ideas on False Ground were conceived on the Stick. Later, I performed and recorded with it. I would have loved to use it in the course of a music degree, but this is an obscure instrument with less than 40 years of history, and no collegiate program existed. On the other hand, being a relatively new instrument, it has musical possibilities that remain somewhat uncharted.
The Stick has fluctuated in significance in my life and music.
UPDATE 2021: I got a Krappy Tapper with an alternate fretting for 41-tone equal temperament, more about that at kiteguitar.com
© Aaron Wolf