The Chapman Stick is a musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the late 1960s. It superficially looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar with from 8 to 12 strings mounted it. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping, or fretting, rather than plucking, the strings. Instead of one hand fretting and the other hand plucking, both hands sound notes by touching the strings to the frets. For this reason, it can sound many more notes at once than most other stringed instruments, making it more comparable with a keyboard instrument like the piano than with other stringed instruments.
This arrangement lends itself to playing multiple lines at once and many stick players have mastered performing bass, guitar and vocal lines simultaneously.
Compare with: Warr guitar
