After a lifetime of playing instruments usually employed in an ensemble environment like guitar, pedal steel and mandolin, it's refreshing to play a whole tune, replete with chords, bass lines, melody and all the harmonic implications that a solo piano player can conjure up -without having to answer for their choices to anyone. I'm impressed by Stick players who can sit down and put their own spin on a set of standards with musical authority - and there ain't many of them. I only regret I picked up Stick relatively late in life - but that's the journey I'm on.

I suppose I'm "solo" but in the sense of being a one-man band in that in addition to my Stick, I've got a pile of basses, guitars, synths, drum machine, and drums in my home setup. The Stick has pretty much taken the role of the basses and guitars I've been playing for decades (unless I need a fretless bass tone, or a certain flavor of guitar strumming). Something I didn't really anticipate as I started playing Stick was, the fact that both of my hands are going through the same mechanical actions (tapping) as opposed to one fretting and one plucking. That symmetry really gels with me and I find I far prefer to play basslines and arpeggiated "guitar" parts on a Stick.

Aside from that stuff, every day I just sit down with my Stick and freely improvise, sometimes with my drum machine, sometimes not. That 100% free solo musical expression is very therapeutic.

he's playing on instagram tonite DEC 29 at his house ( i think ) at 5pm PST


https://www.instagram.com/brightbrownny/