Hello! Welcome to Paigan0's Day 260 on the Stick! (You pronounce that as "Pagan Zero," by the way, which is a pun on "Patient Zero," as I am the Original Paigan--with or without the zombie virus--which I never thought to mention before now!)

As my sig block suggests, I have two Sticks, a wooden and an aluminum (and I'm apparently into something called "fractals"). I've done three progress videos so far to show my progress on the Chapman Stick. Day 100 and then Day 150 (titles and links below), and now this one, "Day 260: All About That Bass (Chapman Stick Railboard)." [What happened to Day 250, you ask? It took me 10 days to figure out how to play left hand by itself! It was worth the extra 10 days!]

I've played keyboards and songflute (recorder) for 30 years, and all the rest of the instruments in your standard rock band for about 15-20 (bass, guitar, drums) and then vocals for about 2 years now. My left hand on Stick does wayyyy more than my left hand ever did/does on piano or "regular" bass guitar. I'd like to talk about that for a bit, and show some videos. My mission from day 1 to now day 260 has been to integrate Stick into my studio creations. I've been seeking to become a better Stick player, and I'm seeking the same fluency to express myself that I have on piano. As I get better, my vision is still to integrate Stick into my playing, but the playing can be solo Stick as well! It's more than just a bass and a guitar!

"Day 260: All About That Bass (Chapman Stick Railboard)"
Part 1: Typewriter bass
Part 2: Lefthand-only bass
Part 3: Typewriter melody with effects (and a cat, Geo)
Part 4: Back and forth, call and response, left hand bass, right hand melody

Part 1: Typewriter bass
First, I sought to become a Master of Typewriter Style, a back-and-forth alternating of left and right hands, like a typewriter (or a keyboard for the young folk. Same motion but much less sound. And less ink).

Part 2: Lefthand-only bass
Then I noticed my right hand was playing bass with two of the frets across all the strings and the 3rd fret was being played by my left hand. I realized I could just play all of it with my right hand (which is actually supposed to be the melody hand), and then worked out the left hand version (which feels admittedly more "natural" and smoother to play the bass side). I still can't get as precise and "clear" of a tone with one hand as I can with typewriter style. But I'm sure that'll come.

Part 3: Typewriter melody; rocking it out with a Bengal Kitty
So now I try to work in the right hand on melody. Same progression for the melody side: first two hands alternating typewriter style, then full one-handed-ness. (I'm doing pentatonics with only two fingers. It looks and feels weird and I'm working on it. I actually use 3 and even the pinky on the right hands for non 2-notes-per-string scales). I forgot that the bass side wasn't being recorded but some of it bled through anyway into the room mic--so apologies on that! I show way more of this part of my sloppy noodling entirely because of the cute kitty, Geo, who wandered into the production. He keeps bumping my elbow to give him belly rubs and I keep messing up laughing. Good times!

Part 4: Back and forth, call and response, left hand bass, right hand melody
I'm now playing two hands separately, one on each side, "together" but basically doing a call-and-response back and forth from the bass to the melody side. I can't do a complicated bassline and play hardly anything on the melody side (yet). Maybe day 350!

************************************
Looking (semi-)objectively at the video, a couple of impressions jump out at me:

1) I'm using 3 fingers only in my bass hand. That plus a lot of something I'm going to call "hand motion" that I invented (just kidding, Greg, but I am the guy who "invented" major and minor triads and scales back in 1989, and it's something I do all the time on piano. But I called it "moving the claw around" on piano. "Hand motion" is much sexier!) I'm sure I'll work my usually-very-strong piano pinkies into my Sticking at some point. But only on the melody side so far!

2) I'm moving my left hand like a m'f'er, which surprises me. I'm such a boring octave-root-fifth-note-in-the-left-hand bass piano player compared to what I see on my Sticking. Even my "typewriting" looks cool as hell, until I realized I could do all that one-handed. I actually look like I know what I'm doing--at least a little! (In the easiest chord change known to man: I IV V.) I might actually be able to rock this puppy!

[I know I've gots lots of issues and bad habits already. I'm open to any constructive feedback--as long as it doesn't crush me emotionally into a tiny ball of Sticky self-loathing--I kid! I truly want to get better! (If I don't agree with your awesome advice, at worst, I'll pull from it what I can and ignore the rest!)]

Yoroshiku! Cheers!-- Stickin' With It, Stickist Steve #6

Day 260: All About That Bass (Chapman Stick Railboard)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1H6UqOUoEE[/youtube]

Stick studio creations:
"PainStickingly" - Rosewood 10-string (bass and rhythm/lead) + piano, Fender Rhodes e-piano, strings, and drums


"Chromatic Jack" -- Railboard bass, piano, & drums (Steve Sink) with Scott Kerr on rhythm and solo guitars (SINKERR)


Performance Videos:
Day 100: "PainStickingly" -- Chapman Stick & Keyboards with 3D Fractals
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkoTGJQYo0k

"150 Days Playing Chapman Stick: Stickin' it to The Man"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfdWK8mtBWo

[I have 2 new stickers to put on my Sticks! Blue dragon and white flames. Oh--every note of this current video can be rocked horizontally, flat on my lap like Jeff Healey , as well as with DBro holder, cello-style, but I can barely play anymore standing up! I have the TAGG Interface now to work back to standing and Sticking--but not a cymbal stand yet that will hold it. So I'll get back to you on the vertical/horizontal standing/sitting Sticking. As it was, Geo The Cat was the best part of this 9-minute progress video!]--Steve

Sinker, that was some busy bee business at the start of the video,....yer making progress though dude,.....I couldn't make a note until I played for a year...
Geo looks like he wants to learn to tap at 4:30 minutes in......he is a lovely kitty!

Cheers,
K

Your one hard working tenacious fellow.awesome working hands,very nice piano also. Excellent workmanship in all.Quite the resume also.I think i'll call you "The Working Man''.

Awesome, man! You're light years ahead of me too! Keep on going, I look forward to stealing all of your ideas,man.

Extreme coolness, this was a good one to watch!

Thanks, Kevin! You might have missed my quick shout out to you in the video for recommending progressive lenses in my glasses. You can see how close the Board is to my face in the video, and also how far the lower notes are. A lot of focusing back and forth and the new glasses (I got them the day you told me about them!) have been awesome.

I know some people hate the entire concept of a progress video. I love them personally, and seeing others' progress along the way has been very encouraging to me as a new Stickist.

I also wanted to post this so people don't think I'm just full of Hot Air, and just talk a bunch without rocking it out. Or that I'm just about fractals. Or politics (you know I can't stay away from the Lounge and its Lord and Master, Kevmodeus Rex.) Or that I'm the superheroes, sci-fi, and comics guy...Or just a piano/keyboard player who keeps hogging up the Showcase with my New Age Shit and Fractals--I can't help it! Don't hate a brother just because he's prolific! (Look at me, Ma! I'm rockin' it out! Ma--look! Ma!!!) This thread was my exactly 800th posting on this forum when I started it--and then I didn't want to make any more comments and ruin it!

I work at least an hour a day on the Sticking, usually more. And I unfortunately spend a great deal more than that throughout the day commenting on people's awesome stuff on this forum. I just wanted people to know that I'm serious about the Sticking and don't let the 438 other interests and skills mean that I'm not serious about my music, especially my Stick Music (I'm not THAT serious, though. A joke or two along the way, fer sure!)

I appreciate the interest, help, and support along the way! You rock, Kevin C!

Thank you, sir! I now have "They call me "The Working Man'!" blaring through my head, but since I'm a huge Geddy/RUSH fan, that's awesome! Thank you, sir!
Scott, you're very kind to say so, but you can rock a Stick far, far better than I can! And don't steal my "Hand Motion" discovery, even if you do have that pinky re-attached now--I kid! (Thanks again for the term, Greg!) It's good to see you haven't lost any major mobility from the injury. Thanks for rocking it out with me!

I appreciate you all taking a moment to watch the Fractal Piano dude rock it out for a bit on his Stick!

your love for the Stick is quite evident in your actions. that's a gift you give yourself, and what anyone else believes won't change that. that's a valuable thing.

your love for this forum (and your openness to sharing many things about yourself and your life with us) is quite evident in your actions and that's a gift for us all. that's also a valuable thing.

the cat is the icing on the top. give Geo some love for us

Thanks Bill The Hitman! You rock! Sticks in the air!

Hi paigan0. I didn't catch your other vids yet to see the before and after, but the bass playing is definitely getting there. It took me a while to place where I heard that bass line before(right in your song with jayesskerr). What a difference context can make! I would say you are well ahead of the average Stick growth percentile at day 260.

With this video as the only reference I have to your performing on the Stick, I ask the following with hopes that it doesn't insult you or your current abilities. Have you tried putting bass and melody side together yet? I mean I see you doing it some in this video while your playing melody part(and a pretty unique way of doing it-keeping other fingers free to use on the melody side) and in the call and response section.
I am talking chords on melody side and bass line on bass side. Or like a vocal melody on the melody side with arpeggiated chords on the bass side?
If you haven't, I bet it is right around the corner for you. I would guess that coming from a piano background the hand independence may come a bit easier for you than some-but that doesn't mean it will be a piece of cake.

Keep up the good work. You and jayesskerr may just get me up off my lazy butt to post some videos yet!


Mike

Thanks for listening and the comments, Mike! I feel like I have so very far to go but I also feel like I've made a lot of progress. Kind of, I suck a little less enough now to see how much further I have to go, when before, it seemed like "How the hell do you get this thing to work?"


Right to all of that: I've got a little advantage head start on the two-handedness, from piano, but not near as much as I hoped! And you're absolutely right--I'm close to getting both hands fully together but not there yet.

For example, I plan to work in the left hand pinky to get at those 10th chords (third an octave up from the root), but I can actually reach that third (minor and major both) with my 3rd finger--it stretches like a stretchy thing from piano--but the pinky would work better. I'm working on that.

The other thing you touched on is the right hand playing chords. On Stick, I'm at the BB King level of playing (no disrespect to the Blues Master! I should say "style" and not "level"), where I never play a chord and just solo via scales and melodies. This whole blues thing I'm doing--I IV V bass under pentatonic noodlings--is very much NOT my style on keyboards. I'm much more a block chords with arpeggios guy on my piano, and I'm sure that's a style that will translate well into Stick when I'm More Worthy.

But part of the point of playing Stick in the first place has been to get me to do new things and stretch myself not just instrumentally, but stylistically and harmonically and all that. When I finally can work up the New Age Progressive stuff that I do on piano, and translate it to Stick, then I'll be jamming!

Here's what my end state goal is for Stick, if anyone's curious. This is what I do on piano, that I'd like to be able to do on Stick:


Your Hit The Road Jack was great! I'd like to see you develop that one further. Scott and I and others are just trying to rock it out and get others to do the same. It's all about building an encouraging creative community, and as awesome as many if not most of us are individually, there's very few of us Stickists and we need to Stick together!

Cheers!

Alright, buddy. You asked for it.

There's good news and there's not so great news, but not terrible, either. In fact, it ain't so bad after all.

The good news first:

1) The fingers look good, nice and limber, and totally capable of doing everything they need to do on an inverted fifths instrument. And let's face it, you'll need LOTS of hand movement playing that tuning, which is why Greg (Stick Enterprises) says those things.

2) The notes are good, your ability to play intervals and your grasp of the music is killer as is evidenced by your piano skills.

3) The tone is beefy, bruh. That's a railboard, yes?

Here's the bad news, which ain't so bad:

The timing is your weak point, and frankly, it's essentially your only weak point. When you practice, slow that shit down. Do it real slow, like some old school James Brown. If you can't play it slow, you can't play it fast. Accelerate exceedingly slowly. If you are off time at any point in the latest tempo, stop. Do not try to play faster. Work on the last tempo you fucked up.

If you have a way to practice along with recordings of other bands/people, jump on that shit. I did it immediately when I received my Stick via UPS and had good results. I learned "Waiting Man" in the course of 24 hours, stayed up all night alternately downing bong hits and relentlessly juggling 16th notes, feeling out the relationship between the two fields, melody and bass.

For me, the most important part of any instrument I play is the percussion. That is, the timing... the beat. You gotta nail that shit down. To this day, when I'm not playing my Warr or bass, I'm playing percussion on anything that's handy... my chest, the steering wheel, the table when I'm contemplating how to thrash you in the Lounge... drives my wife fucking nuts, I tell ye'.

Just for entertainment purposes, here's a video of me playing backup with my son, Kieran at a local open mic. They Might Be Giants, learned the song that day. The percussion is ingrained. When you play, think of percussion FIRST.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G8g79whTu6U[/youtube]

If you play the Stick, you ARE a percussionist, and you HAVE to play percussion. You will not become a badass unless you can nail down the rhythm. You have everything else, and WELL FUCKING DONE. Now it's time to play drums with your hands.

I wouldn't bother to say anything at all unless I thought your playing warranted criticism based on its merit. For what it's worth, bro.

Kev