Hi everyone,
After several hundred hours and an odyssey of several years, this weekend I'm finishing the editing of my first instructional DVD.
If all goes according to plan, Basic Free Hands Technique: Learning the Chapman Stick from the Bottom Up should be available by mid-December.
It contains two full hours of material, divided up into six lessons:
Basic Hand Movement (truly different from conventional fretting techniques)
Hand Independence (a whole body approach to separating your hands)
Bassline Movement (with examples from Still Water, Blues for the Status Quo,etc)
Melody Movement (learning the key, not just the scale)
Independence Training (exercises to help free your hands from each other)
Rhythmic Independence (putting all the pieces together)
here are a couple of screenshots:
There are over 200 graphics that show pitch, movement and fingering info, and no notation to read.
All the material is applicable to all of the major tunings, so there's nothing on-screen that can't be played on Classic, MR, Baritone Melody or Deep Baritone 10-string tuned instruments.
This DVD clearly illustrates the technique concepts I've been writing about here for so long, specifically those having to do with hand movement as a basis for two-handed tapping, and all it's implications, including its impact on timing, tone, comfort, dynamic control and hand independence.
I think you'll find there's nothing else like this material out there, and that it can apply equally to any genre of music. I'm not a guitarist, so the method I learned comes truly from Emmett's book, and from the Stick itself, through 26 years of playing and teaching experience.
My thanks to Emmett for permission to use his finger symbols from the original Free Hands book. They are a great concept, and really help to get the points across on screen.
More details on an exact release date and pricing soon.
