The Ryno Pen

… is where you find a Stick™.

^{This post will require a bit of Boring Biographical Detail.
As I have not contacted the Third Parties involved (and as this blog is a load of untruths anyhow), epithets have been used.}

First, a general apology: I have drifted away from many old friends. Even day-to-day, face-to-face personal relationships are hard to maintain, at least from the perspective of this little, back, autistic duck. Letters don’t get written: those that are, don’t get posted… that’s if I’ve managed to extract my head from whatever’s obsessing me at the moment anyway.

Sorry I lose touch, people. Sometimes I suddenly become aware I’ve embarrassed you, or overlooked something, and I don’t know what to say, so I don’t say anything ever again.

It was the Illustrated Scotsman who introduced me to his workmate KJ. “He’s into weird music like you are”, was the glowing recommendation. We met, discovered a mutual admiration of Yes and Brian Eno, spent an afternoon digging into each other’s music collections and instrument stashes, and came out of it as a sort-of-band.

KJ was adept at guitar, guitar synth and keyboards as well as the Chapman Stick.

^{Stick, played by somebody (not KJ)}

He had a minor array of synth equipment, too, and a Yamaha CX5 like mine, so we found a lot in common.

There were some excellent times, like the piece “Second Nature“, which was just a (very long) field recording of frogs in a Snowy Mountains waterhole, KJ playing Stick, and me on synthesizer. It worked, just perfect intuition and second-guessing each other from the second the tape rolled, with no discussion or rehearsal beforehand. (It may be posted on this blog at a later stage, but tonight’s entry is an unluckier piece!)

There was stuff that didn’t work, too. The real train-wrecks can stay under the table, in the pile of unsorted four-track tapes. Given that KJ was musically-literate and into Frank Zappa, and I have no formal knowledge of theory or notation (and was then obsessed with ambient music and minimalist composers), it’s a miracle we managed to function as a musical partnership for a couple of years, including a live performance at a certain prestigious place of national importance.

My hiatus in the country slowed the creative process: there was no consumer-level Net and email back then, so MIDI data tapes and infrequent visits for jamming/recording became the order of play.

And so it was that I wound up in Canberra one weekend, with whatever I gear I’d unplugged and shoved in the van. We just weren’t firing on any keyboard-based stuff that day, and I hadn’t packed a guitar.

^{Crash-bar Guitar!}

KJ’s “guitar” was the GR-707. The crash-bar presented no problem, nor did programming the synth component. The thing that did my head in was the tracking. The wired-in stuff under the fretboard was pretty primitive by today’s standards, and the little electric bogeyman inside the synth had some pretty idiosyncratic notions about what should be done when somebody with my peculiar fingering technique played the guitar.

To cut a long story short, I was a bit GRAAAAAAR about the whole thing, and sat there mentally kicking myself for not packing a guitar.

The Stick was propped up against the wall. Let’s have a closer look…

^{The one in the middle, a ten-string model, is like KJ’s}

A Stick is played with both hands on the fretboard. The technique is akin to “hammer-ons” on a regular guitar, but with both hands. Yep, that lazy plucking hand becomes an implement of torture, as your mind and muscle memory discover Cognitive Dissonance Writ Large: “I’m a Right Hand, dammit, not a Fretting Hand!“.

The strings can be plucked or scratched longitudinally, as well as being hammered-on. The nut end is padded to avoid nasty overtones from the “left-over” top portion of the string.

^{Strings are pitched deepest in the middle of the neck: tuning is not like a guitar either.}

KJ was noodling away on the GR707. I started the tape deck recording and gingerly picked up the Stick for the first time ever. This is what came out¹: thank the FSM for those good ol’ autistic-savant skills! It’s called “Fetch!” because that is what one does with a Stick, or so my poodle tells me.

10.23 MB of Megaupload[here] or Fileducky [here] gets you 7:54 of haphazardry. Enjoy!

¹ No edits were applied, but some percussion and omigosh-is-the-kettle-boiling synth was added by me later.

(Music licensed under Creative Commons.)

Coda: Here’s a video of somebody who can play a Stick, with a little Satie for ye: