The Chapman Stick is an electric musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s. A member of the guitar family, the Chapman Stick usually has ten or twelve individually tuned strings and is used to play bass lines, melody lines, chords, or textures. Designed as a fully polyphonic chordal instrument, it can also cover several of these musical parts simultaneously.
Ten-stringed Chapman Stick
Saltatio Mortis bandmember Bruder Frank
A musician bowing the Stick
The first Stick prototype
Tapping is a playing technique that can be used on any stringed instrument, but which is most commonly used on guitar. The technique involves a string being fretted and set into vibration as part of a single motion. This is in contrast to standard techniques that involve fretting with one hand and picking with the other. Tapping is the primary technique intended for instruments such as the Chapman Stick.
Niccolò Paganini, the 19th century violin master, one of the first innovators of musical instrument tapping.
Jazz guitarist Roy Smeck, seen in the 1926 short film His Pastimes, was an early popularizer of tapping.
Enver Izmailov, a strictly tapping Ukrainian folk and jazz guitar player in 2009.
Stanley Jordan, a jazz guitarist, relies extensively on tapping.