One Cloud

Conscious Stream

Noodle Soup

These are my first three solo Stick pieces, written in 2005 and 2006. They're somewhat mellow, possibly a bit of Celtic/folky sound to them, a hint of progressive rock influence, a crisp taste, less filling with a clean finish (?).

The new recording of One Cloud was done in Oct 2007 on a Macbook Pro and Logic 8 using my effects rack of Boss processors. You can also compare to the demo recording I did in 2005.

This demo of Conscious Stream was done on a Mac G4 and Abelton Live and my Boss effects rack.

For Noodle Soup, all the effects prcoessing was done in software with Native Instruments Guitar Rig.

Some rough videos I made at home:

One Cloud video: (Quicktime / Youtube)
Conscious Stream video (Quicktime / YouTube)
Noodle Soup video (Quicktime / YouTube)

Photo by Brandon Wu

Differential

I put this together with Logic in an evening after trying to come up with some bass and guitar tones with Guitar Rig... all the processing is done on the computer- no amps, cabinets or other hardware effects. Kind of a simply structured rock instrumental featuring the Rickenbacker bass tone I love ever so much. Synth sounds are Native Instruments Pro-53 and Absynth, drums coming from Kompakt and "played" with an M-Audio Trigger Finger. Once I had a bass tone I liked everything sort of fell together smoothly, which is rare for me...I don't think I've ever written a tune in one sitting before. I tried to find something more unusual for the melody part during the "chorus" but the fat Prophet synthesizer sound just seemed to fit the best, even if the "widdly bits" makes the tune sound like every neo-prog band from the past 20 years. But overall I liked the way this one came out.

Mighty Wren

This is a multi-tracked Stick piece, created with Logic and Guitar Rig 2. This is a first in that I wanted to try a rock tune without actually using guitar, bass or keyboards, just the Stick processed in different ways. The drums are from Native Instruments Kontakt, played with a Trigger Finger (and generous quantization being my friend). This one has a sort of "power prog" vibe, partly inspired by some great new bands I've discovered lately like Analog Missionary and Dredg, and named in honor of the little Carlona Wren family that lived in our carport for a month until the babies were ready to fly off into the world. They were cute little birds, yet amazingly LOUD!

Rush To Judgement

The title gives away the big musical influence here... this is another recording experiment I put together in which I tried to develop the guitar and bass sounds using Guitar Rig. It was recorded with Apple Logic, using NI Kompakt for drum samples and Wave Arts TrackPlug and FinalPlug for some fine tuning (if you could call it that). Drums were preformed with an M-Audio Trigger Finger. The guitar (Godin Exit 22) and bass were plugged directly into a PreSonus firewire audio interface. Yes that's even a real Rickenbacker bass! Does it sound anything like Geddy Lee? Well, don't Rush to Ju.... oh never mind.

Heavy Horses

Slipstream

Cheap Day Return

Wond'ring Aloud

A few recording attempts at some Jethro Tull arrangements I'm working on for solo Chapman Stick... I've always loved those acoustic Tull tunes spread across various albums, and Ian Anderson's acoustic guitar technique is a big influence on my Stick playing. Still practicing these quite a bit, trying to polish them up.

Wond'ring Aloud incorporates the Synth Follower program on my Projects page... basically it's a little application I wrote that detects the lowest bass note I'm playing and generates a MIDI chord (once I press a foot pedal) appropriate to the key I'm playing in. It's very fun to use, almost like having a third hand to add a bit of synth texture, and doesn't require or use a MIDI pickup either.

Here's a video of me playing Cheap Day Return, in Quicktime format. I also have a version on YouTube.
Here's a video of me playing Wond'ring Aloud, in Quicktime format. I also have a version on YouTube.
Here's a video of me playing Slipstream, in Quicktime format. I also have a version on YouTube.

These older rock instrumental demos were recorded on a vintage Mac Quadra 610 with Opcode Vision around 1996-98 and are fairly progressive rock inspired, with elements of bands like Marillion, Rush, ELP, and King Crimson.

Warning: There is some prog-rock goofiness going on here, involving "soaring themes", wacky chords, drawn out song structures, fake synth brass sounds and other "lush keyboards". Perhaps visions of wizards and dragons will come to mind as you hear these, or intergalactic space voyages. What can I say I was (am) a geek. Not to mention there are some rough edges here, performance and recording-wise. But I figure there are a few good ideas amongst the generous amounts of cheesiness.

Apart from the predominantly synthesizer oriented sounds, the piece Polyrhythms incorporates some Chapman Stick, and all have some degree of electric guitar. Wondering to Myself is a guitar/flute duet, an acoustic piece along the lines of Jethro Tull.

My one and only experiment with alternate tuning. Created in 1999 using a Kurzweil K2000 synthesizer which allowed different tuning systems, this piece uses Wendy Carlos' Alpha tuning, in which every step is 78 cents (there are four steps per minor third), with 15.385 steps per octave (thus there is no pure octave). I like the surreal "otherworldy" sound of the tuning.

A grad school experiment gone terribly awry! Written in 1999, this is a rock piece that borrows sound samples from a few different sources (a "soundscape" from a King Crimson album, a Marillion vocal clip, a Beethoven documentary, and an Edgar Varèse orchestral piece). The sound sources are "convolved" together to create new textures, and slowly become more distinguishable as the piece develops. Kind of weird, not for the faint of heart!

Another grad school project, using good old fashioned electro-acoustic music techniques and equipment-- tape splicing, analog synthesis with patch cords (an ARP 2600) and an old Emu sampler. The most experimental piece I've done, which explores various musical expressions and textures only possible with electronics.

Photo by Brandon Wu

I started playing flute in the fourth grade, and since then have also noodled around with keyboards, guitar, and bass, not really knowing what I wanted to focus on until I discovered the Chapman Stick, which combines some of the best elements of all those instruments.

After a few years of experimenting with a couple different Stick models (10-string, NS/Stick) my main instrument is now a Grand Stick, which I began focusing on as my primary instrument in 2004. More information on the Stick can be found at the Stick website. This is a unique instrument developed around the concept of Emmett Chapman's two-handed tapping technique. It incorporates elements of guitar, bass, piano and percussion, and rather than plucking or strumming the Stick, both hands tap the strings onto the frets, making multi-part arrangements easier to realize. On the Grand Stick there are 12 strings, and each set of 6 strings can be processed separately and/or go to a different amp.

I have recordings of some Stick pieces above, in addition here are a few more short examples:

Stick Example Solo	Solo arrangement style
Stick Example Bass/Chords	Bass-line plus chords style (chord progression from Marillion's "Childhood's End")
Stick Example Chords/Distortion	Ambient chords on bass side, distortion lead sound on melody
Stick Example "Guitar Rig"	A few different tones (some clean, some synth-like) using Native Instrument's Guitar Rig 2 - no hardware gear

Most Stick players have the bass tuned in fifths to take advantage of wide chord voicings, but because I wanted to adapt some melodic bass and acoustic guitar style techniques that are an important part of the sound I'm after, I have my instrument set up in a custom mirrored fourths tuning (low bass E up to F in fourths on the bass side, B to C in fourths on the melody side). I give up some pitch range compared to fifths on the low and high end, but in addition to the reasons above I feel this tuning also makes it easier to read keyboard music as well as providing a nice symmetrical relationship between the hands. Stick Enterprises now offers this as a standard tuning.

Right now I'm moving towards Guitar Rig as my main effects setup... just the Stick plugged into a computer and processed with software. In the meantime my hardware Stick setup is as follows: the bass strings are processed through a Sansamp Bass Driver DI with the parallel output going to a Boss SE-70, so I can combine the outputs of both these devices. The melody side goes to a Boss GX-700 with the loop send going to another Boss SE-70, again allowing me to use both devices in parallel for nice layered sounds. The outputs from all 4 devices go to a line mixer which can then be amplified with a Barbetta keyboard combo amp or PA/monitoring system. My particular Stick is the extended 36" scale version, made of padauk wood, with black linear inlays, Fret Rails and the PASV-4 pickup.