Rich Little Stick Player
I got my first stick in 1976, having heard of it from a high school friend Michael Kollwitz. As a long-time guitar player, I immediately saw the potential of the instrument as a springboard for improvising melodic and percussive ideas.
I find the beauty of the Chapman stick in the inhuman fret board range, allowing amazing rythms, ripping melodic lines and articulate parallel passages throughout various playing techniques, styles, and conceptual approaches. You can think like a drummer and play something rhythmically interesting with feeling and soul that really grooves. The fun really begins when using the Stick as a launchboard tapping out phrases as if they were being played by a drummer, and then moving the melodic ideas up and down and across the fret board.
I met Emmett and Yuta Chapman and got one right away. Mike moved up from Riverside and we became room mates and started a band "Mirror Image" in California's central valley. Eventually Mike got married and moved back to Riverside, while I got married to Joan and moved to the North Bay area and began raising a family. I took multipart lessons from Bob Culbertson in San Jose on the art and science of stick playing. My song writing continues today as does my work with drummers and percussionists and recording work in the vineyard studio.
The Spock Connection It was on Star Trek where Rich saw Spock playing a Chapman stick and immediately became infatuated with it. The interplanetary sound coming from this mysterious looking instrument was hypnotizing. The stick waned and waned, touching every spectrum of sound with astral melodies embedded in rhythm patterns pulling from distant galaxies. Rich joined a select group that day and has also become a pioneer with the final frontier as his guide and the stick at his side.
Tappin the Twig" features Stick musical artist, Rich Little, and the site moniker reflects the Chapman Stick playing style, which is done by tapping the strings to the instrument with both hands to produce bass, rythm and melody. It also includes the percussive drumsticks tapping out the beat.