I've recently taken an interest in the Chapman Stick. I've been practicing Linnstrument for at least 30 minutes every day since the start of 2019. (I had a long run in 2018 as well but fell ill and lapsed.) This has changed what I think proficiency on the Linnstrument will look like and mean for me and I might expand on that in a different post. The important part is that I wanted to strengthen single voice bass lines and remembered that the Stick has a regular layout so I thought to look at some players and methods for inspiration.
More than one person has recommended the Stick to me over the years and it never really seemed too alluring. I was pretty good at the few songs that I could play on classical guitar but those songs were all around first position and not extremely challenging. I focused immediately and completely on the difficulty of what looked like playing a bass and a guitar at once.
So the Chapman Stick wasn't for me but the layout was similar enought to crib from, I figured. Then I watched a couple videos from Kevin Keith. Now, on the one hand, his playing definitely has the combined difficulty that I always worried about. I have no idea if I will ever get that good but after watching more from him and a few other extremely talented Stick players like Rodrigo Serrao, Steve Adelson, Brett Bottomley, Robert Culbertson, and Greg Howard I want to put in the time.
I now hear how the Stick lets one person play a bassline and voicings with enough space (and even a different sound/timbre) and that is really attractive to me now. It may take years of practice every day but I've finally proven to myself that I can make time and stick with it so…