Greetings to all the fellow Stick Enthusiasts on the forum !

I’m Rahul, a musician and artist from the Washington D.C. area. I’m primarily a guitarist but I do dabble in bass, flute, synthesizers and drum programming. I’m currently playing in a band and am also a solo musician on the side.

Job wise, I work in the software industry. I was originally a programmer but now have moved on to Project Management. I still do enjoy tinkering with Linux distro’s, Raspberry Pi and other technologies.

Art wise, I work with traditional and digital media. My work includes pyrography, spray painting, traditional sketches, digital drawings, animation, photography, photo manipulation, fractal art [2D and 3D] and fractal animations. I’ve listed links below to my work if you’re interested.

Music wise, my influences are all over the place. I grew up on a healthy diet of metal. So everything from Led Zep to Cannibal Corpse and Deicide. I gravitated strongly towards Progressive Rock & Metal and Fusion. So bands [and solo acts] with Steve Morse, Petrucci, John McLaughlin, Tommy Emmanuel, Preston Reed, Al Di Meola, Shawn Lane, Prasanna, Yossi Sassi, and other innumerable Fusion acts.

I was introduced to the Chapman Stick back in 2004 sometime when I was looking up Stanley Jordan and his playing style. I was impressed by this piano playing style on the guitar and was researching this Touch Style of playing and hit Preston Reed, Michael Hedges, Adam Fulara and Tony Levin. I was a member on the now defunct Tappistry forum, for a while. There I was introduced to the Warr Guitar, Chapman Stick, and other modified Touch Instruments. Since then, I’ve been trying to incorporate 2 handed tapping onto my electric and acoustic guitar playing. It was then that I also bought my first Bob Culbertson performance DVD.

Back in 2011, I was fortunate to have the fantastic Rob Martino on the same bill as our band. He pretty much floored us with his playing. That fueled my fire to buy this instrument if I ever got a chance. The Stick was always a little expensive for my budget, especially given that I was never able to try one out at any store.



That changed a few weeks back when I ran across a beautiful used Blue Railboard on Craigslist. It was very modestly priced and it was being sold with a hard case. I was a little hesitant, so I watched it for a few days while doing some research on the Stickist forum for Stolen Gear [recent activity of stolen gear from Tony Macalpine and other touring bands and artists have made us all wary of people selling gear at low cost, especially in DC]. Once I did that, I also looked up Greg’s video on buying your instrument and the different pickups and other videos on the same subject.

I quickly realized that at this price, most people could buy the piece as a backup instrument and it would not last too long on CL. So I contacted the person to buy it. As it turns out, the person was an ex-student of Greg. The instrument seemed good and pretty new. He also threw in extra Strings, Greg’s DVD and CD, Strap and cables. I was very excited to get a Stick bundle, at that price.

Once I got home I did research on the Baritone-Melody tuning as that’s what the instrument came tuned to. After the initial growing pains, I realized the best way for me to approach the instrument is to first try and replicate one of my Guitar Tapped pieces onto the instrument. A week and a few Greg and Bob Culbertson videos later I was able to venture onto the board with some sense of confidence.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=49SExdHoRZY[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TXAfYVkz8Y[/youtube]

And that’s my story ! In the coming years I hope to learn and grow as a musician and contribute on this forum. I’m sure at some point I will take lessons. And eventually I will probably either play it out as a solo musician or incorporate it into my band.

My band Iritis, is a progressive psychedelic fusion band. We fuse jazz, metal, progressive rock and Middle Eastern elements into our style. Plus we use Fractal Animations in our visuals for a psychedelic effect.

My solo efforts are more Indo-Fusion based and experimental in nature.

My band:
Website: http://www.iritisband.com
Reverbnation: https://www.reverbnation.com/iritis
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/Iritisband/videos

Solo Artist
My personal website: http://www.mukerji.us/
Facebook Artist Page: https://www.facebook.com/Rahul-Mukerji- ... /timeline/
DeviantArt Page: http://rahulmukerji.deviantart.com/
Youtube Page: https://www.youtube.com/user/z7egor734/videos
Reverbnation: https://www.reverbnation.com/rahulmukerji

Pics of the Stick:

Hey Rahul, welcome to the forum! Enjoy your new Railboard man.

cheers,
kev

Welcome! It's great to have you here.

Wow, listen to the sustain on that Railboard.

-Eric

Sounds awesome, man! Can't wait to hear/see more!

Hi Rahul, welcome to Stick-land,

The Chapman Stick Jam video was a really great introduction. I'm up in the DC area every now and then, and there are a few other players up there as well. It would be great to hook up.

Welcome to this forum...congrats for your railboard.

Thanks everyone !!

Thanks Greg for the kind words ! Yes, let me know when you're around DC next time and I'll try and meet up. I would have come out to Rob's final gig but I had another obligation that same night. Missed a magical night, based on the pics and Rob's fb post !

I'm still on your DVD chapter of Hand movements. Coming from a Guitar background I'm preconditioned to go down the "one finger per fret and use the finger strength" approach to playing the instrument. I'm trying to teach myself to move my hand and use the momentum of the wrist and hand for stronger notes, based on the DVD. Great material BTW, it made understanding and playing the instrument a lot easier. That coupled with Bob's free YT videos provide a good foundation to understanding the fundamentals of the instrument.

I've been watching a lot of these fine forum players on YT and its magical to hear some of these pieces. Bob's flamenco / spanish pieces with this tremolo fingering are particularly awe inspiring !!