Greg, you have been playing for over 20 years. How long did it take before you could close your eyes while you were playing? Seeing you play live up close while I was just a few months into playing Stick was really great for my education. One of the things that I put on my list of "things to do someday" was to learn how to not look while playing. How do I even start with that?

Thanks,

-Eric

I couldn't possibly comment for a stick, but with guitar, and my dabbles with our household's piano over the years, not needing to look it the fretboard just came with familiarising my fingers with it for several hours a day. From starting with staring at the fret hand from about an 1inch away to closing my eyes and still playing through complex technical soloing. But it was never anything I worked on specifically.

Also as a complete amateur in the world of two handed tapping, I'd like to ask something that has been annoying me quite a while but has remained unanswered because of a lack of proper lessons on the subject: When descending between fingers on one string on the stick, or in touchstyle guitar, should the fingers "pull off" from one to another as in conventional guitar technique, or "hammer off" for want of a better description, ie tapping with the index finger, the instant the previous finger lifts off? It seems quite longwinded to explain but simple in practice. Any advice would be very deeply appreciated, as has all the information provided here that I have managed to read up on so far.

Finally, when it comes to repeating the same notes with any great speed, I have adopted the tremolo technique from piano and using two fingers in one fret in syncronisation. Is is quite effective and yields reasonable results, but I'm always suspisious of whether there is another technique that I'm completely missing!

Thanks to Greg, for all the advice already shared in this post.

Either work fine. It really depends if you prefer more of a legato sound to more of a staccato sound. Although with time straight tapping is fairly fluid as well. Pull offs work well when transitioning from an ascending line to the descending line on a specific string because of the seperation required for the 3rd and 4th fingers when straight tapping. (granted this is more prevalent at higher speeds). Because of the shared tendon it takes some time to develop speed when tapping between the 3rd and fourth finger but it's easily attainable.

Your piano technique is fine for a repeating note. Multiple fingers on the same fret. No problems there. Good luck to you.

tritone

Thanks tritone, I'll take the straight no pulloffs approach for now, and work on that, as I want to convert my legato technique on guitar to that, after listening to Holdsworth and really digging the smoothness that his disregard for the pull off brings with it!

Hi Thor,

First, you're really welcome. I love writing about technique, as it helps me sharpen my message in teaching situations.

Now about your questions, Emmett's Free Hands method allows you to make lots of choices about how to play notes. The more of them you learn, the more control you'll have over the music you make.

Learning how to play pulloff's is great, but it's just one type of articulation. My approach is to teach melodic play as a series of motions, like dance steps, learned in muscle memory, so that you can call upon them as needed to get where you need to go.

Rather than thinking about stretching the hand by spreading out the fingers, concentrate on keeping the hand relaxed and moving it as a unit. I can play descending lines as quickly and smoothly as ascending because I don't have to concentrate on getting my fingers out of each other's way. The hand's movement up and down the string does that for me, with the fingers landing where the music dictates.

The same is true of repeated notes. They are easier and much more fluid if you shift your hand slightly in relation to the fret position for each note. This gets each finger out of the next one's way.

Earlier approaches to two-handed tapping like the Touch System are less successful because often the only way to move smoothly from note-to-note was to slide along the string, moving the whole arm at the shoulder.

We can move at the elbow (the same as all other struck and bowed instruments) because of Emmett's discovery. Free Hands, indeed.

Happy Tapping,
Greg

If you have my book there are specific exercises I can steer you to that will illustrate this better than others. If you don't have it, well...

All those points are very welcome, thanks.

I'm afraid I don't have the book, I'm still in the stage of scraping together the cash for a stick, although I'm not far away its slow going (student's cash flow and all that! ) So any ideas are really being played with touchstyle technique on guitar, just figuring out songs and trying to learn hand independance and that.

No doubt I'll be barraging folk for opinions and suggestions when I'm ready to make an order, although I'm always on the lookout for second hand in the UK...

Also, I'm totally lefthanded at everything and having played guitar lefthanded for a long time, I'm thinking I should play chapman stick lefthanded too. Although when i contacted Glenn Poorman with similar thoughts through stick enterprises he recommended just learning righthanded. Having already attempted and failed to relearn guitar rh I'm not so sure. Any comments on the subject?

The Stick (and other tapping instruments) are two handed instruments. The consensus about a left handed Stick is that it makes as much sense as a left handed piano.

Assuming you play cross handed (which most Stick players do), your strong hand will be playing the bass strings, while your weaker hand will be playing the treble strings. Since a lot of Stick players in bands also fill the role of the bass player, this really shouldn't be a problem.

Since your going to have to learn fingering and fretting techniques with both hands whether you play it right handed or left handed it's not really a problem. Emmett will put the strap and set it up left handed if you want.

It's more really just presonal preference. If you'd rather have the strong hand playing the meldoy side or the bass side. Just a matter of comfort. But generally speaking there isn't really going to be a marked difference whichever side you approach it from. Just figure out what feels good to you and go from there. Good luck.

Tritone

Hi Rob,

If you're really used to having the neck on your right side, then that's probably the biggest comfort issue, and I'd let that be the deciding factor.

If, however, you've played any keyboards at all, you might already be used to thinking about left-hand=low, right-hand=high, which makes a difference as well.

However you decide to go, it won't be a problem for Emmett to set the instrument up to accommodate you.

Speaking as a player who started out playing guitar left handed (albiet not long before picking up the stick) I don't think it makes too much difference over all. I didn't find any comfort issues as far as I remember from switching the side of my body the neck came from. I think the fact the stick is held as such a high angle compared to guitar makes that worry minimal. You may find however your left hand is not a accostumed to the technique of fretting since as a guitarist it was primarily used for picking. I thin kthe trade off is however, that your dominate side of the body is likely a bitt better at time keeping (do you tap time with your left foot? I do.) And since the bass is more about rhythm, you may want to suffer the short term difficulties of having your left hand catch up to your right.