# Is a Chapman Stick/Warr Guitar suitable for metal?



## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

Hey guys, I really hope this is suitable for this forum as I really didn't want to join a dedicated forum. And chapman sticks/warr guitar's/whatever other makes... are really the definition of extended range instruments (not looking for an argument if people disagree with me, I mean I'm a 7 string dude myself, this would be for my other guitarist or bassist who is too lazy to go on a forum themselves :L).

Anyway I was wondering whether a CS/WG/WOM is any good at metal, I seen loads of vids of good ol' boys playing some very nice jazzy stuff on them, I've also seen behold the artopus who I think are talented, but pretty bloody dire, but we don't want any of our music to sounds like that kinda of thing.

TBH what I'm mostly wondering about is 
1) How do they sound distorted?
2) To repeat a note ya have to do some sort of hammer on I'm guessing? If so is it hard to play conventional-ish stuff on it? 
3) Anybody have any hands on experience?

Thank ever so much, hope this hasn't been too round about :L

Tom


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## MaxOfMetal (Apr 9, 2010)

It's a wooden, fretted, string instrument. The same principles that govern guitars' tone such as wood selection, pickups, string gauges, amp settings, etc, apply in the same way. 

While you may not like Colin Marston's playing, or his band (Behold...The Arctopus) you should really look into the techniques he employs to do tremolo picking, riffing, etc. As of right now he's just about the only guy I've seen playing heavy, technical music on a touch style instrument.


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

MaxOfMetal said:


> It's a wooden, fretted, string instrument. The same principles that govern guitars' tone such as wood selection, pickups, string gauges, amp settings, etc, apply in the same way.
> 
> While you may not like Colin Marston's playing, or his band (Behold...The Arctopus) you should really look into the techniques he employs to do tremolo picking, riffing, etc. As of right now he's just about the only guy I've seen playing heavy, technical music on a touch style instrument.



Very true, thanks for the info (Y)
I think in my dislike of the band I overlooked allot of things, mostly the warr guitarists techniques :L

Still want more ideas 
x


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## Metal Ken (Apr 9, 2010)

First: They generally use EMG designed pickups, and they can be made out of whatever wood you want (Even bloodwood and compressed bamboo, all kinds of crazy shit). they generally sound great, and they actually intonate better than guitars. 
As far as playing metal, sure you can. you can play anything on them.

Here's a video of Bob Culberston showing how to do tremelo to emulate a spanish style classical guitar sound on a stick. (tremelo @ 2:16)

You apply distortion to that? Tremelo picking. Awesome. 

The other cool thing is you can make it so your bass side is clean and your treble side is distorted, so you can do bass and lead at the same time.


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## Metal Ken (Apr 9, 2010)

Also, there's the NS Stick, designed by Steinberger.

its an 8 string bass that can either be tapped or played like a regular, and has stereo outputs. Its very cool, as well



Edit: In case its not clear, i believe these things are the direction we should be going with extended range stringed instruments, not 8, 9, 10 string guitars. These instruments beat those on every aspect.


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## Demeyes (Apr 9, 2010)

I've never played a Warr or stick but I think I've a fair idea of how it would play. To see how to play it, try and play some riffs all tapped on your normal guitar, you can see immediately the drawbacks and advantages. They are strung up differently but you can get an indication of how you would need to adapt your playing and write riffs for that kind of instrument with some messing around on your normal guitar.
Also you should try and investigate which kind of touchstyle instrument would be more suited to you and what you want to get out of it. I'm pretty sure you can play a warr guitar with a pick if you want but a stick isn't designed for that. Also you'll need to pick how many strings you want/need.
Some guys worth watching for a variety of heavier stuff on touchstyle instruments.





And check out Trey Gunn, you'll have to sift through some terrible music (IMO anyway) but you'll see the Warr put to some great use in his playing.


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## velvetkevorkian (Apr 9, 2010)

Cool videos, thanks for posting that.


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## leftyguitarjoe (Apr 9, 2010)

I play a stick.

From my experience, I'd have to say no. I played mine in a metal band for a bit, but ended up just using it as a glorified bass.

For one, you cant palm mute.

You cant play open notes.

You cant pick. Well, you technically can, but the string spacing is so narrow that its really impractical to pick.


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

Metal Ken said:


> Also, there's the NS Stick, designed by Steinberger.
> 
> its an 8 string bass that can either be tapped or played like a regular, and has stereo outputs. Its very cool, as well



Hey thanks for the help man, yeh they are very cool and versatile, but I didn't mean that kinda tremolo (unless I am misunderstanding something?) , I meant it as in a tremolo of the exact same note on the same string played rapidly (or not so rapidly)
Basically I mean is it easy to play the same not repeatedly? Such as would it be a chore to do a Born of Osiris'y style breakdown on it, not that that's what I intend my guitarist to use it for lol


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

leftyguitarjoe said:


> I play a stick.
> 
> From my experience, I'd have to say no. I played mine in a metal band for a bit, but ended up just using it as a glorified bass.
> 
> ...



Yeh that's kinda what I was fearing really, you end up only being about to play stick style music... thanks


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## Demeyes (Apr 9, 2010)

Tom MAF said:


> Yeh that's kinda what I was fearing really, you end up only being about to play stick style music... thanks


I think if you incorporated a stick you could get something really unique out of it, which is the main reason I could see people trying it. You could do some crazy sounding stuff and really push a band into unchartered ground. If you want to play and sound like a normal metal band though, you'd probably be better off sticking to the usual guitar/bass structure.


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## Metal Ken (Apr 9, 2010)

Tom MAF said:


> Hey thanks for the help man, yeh they are very cool and versatile, but I didn't mean that kinda tremolo (unless I am misunderstanding something?) , I meant it as in a tremolo of the exact same note on the same string played rapidly (or not so rapidly)
> Basically I mean is it easy to play the same not repeatedly? Such as would it be a chore to do a Born of Osiris'y style breakdown on it, not that that's what I intend my guitarist to use it for lol



I understand you're not meaning traditional classical tremelo, but the principle to tremelo picking is essentially the same. In Culbertson's video, if you watch his right hand, he just hits the same note in two different spots. So if you ignore the left hand bass part, then you essentially have regular tremelopicking.


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

Demeyes said:


> I think if you incorporated a stick you could get something really unique out of it, which is the main reason I could see people trying it. You could do some crazy sounding stuff and really push a band into unchartered ground. If you want to play and sound like a normal metal band though, you'd probably be better off sticking to the usual guitar/bass structure.



Ooooo :L, yeh you are right though 
Don't worry I'm not in some sort of generic metal band, we do whatever really as long as it's proggy, I just don't want to end up with it sounding too linear... IDK really.... Bollocks I think we'll just have to go get one and try it out and if it doesn't work then we'll have to sell it or use it do shitty covers of jazz standards, final fantasy music or the mario theme tune...


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

Metal Ken said:


> I understand you're not meaning traditional classical tremelo, but the principle to tremelo picking is essentially the same. In Culbertson's video, if you watch his right hand, he just hits the same note in two different spots. So if you ignore the left hand bass part, then you essentially have regular tremelopicking.



Ah my bad I obviously wasn't looking hard enough :L


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## Tom MAF (Apr 9, 2010)

Ok thanks ever so much for the help guys, I'm off to bed now as it's 1:45 in the morning where I am :S


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## S-O (Apr 9, 2010)

Behold... the Arctopus. Metal as fuck.

Dude plays a Warr guitar, runs, IIRC, the "guitar" through a 5150, and bass through some bass rig, so he will play parts with the guitar player, then do bass parts too, then do guitar and bass parts!


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## metallidude3 (Apr 9, 2010)

+1 for behold... the arctopus amazing band


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## Andii (Apr 10, 2010)

As you might can tell from my avatar I'm a BTA fan so of course I reccomend checking that out.

Colin Martson did a solo death metal project that predates BTA on the Warr guitar:

Indricothere on MySpace Music - Free Streaming MP3s, Pictures & Music Downloads

 



BTW if you like Indricothere order the vinyl so you can back in the awesomeness incarnate that is the back cover.


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## simonXsludge (Apr 10, 2010)

indricothere is amazing!!!


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## Tom MAF (Apr 10, 2010)

shitsøn;1931925 said:


> indricothere is amazing!!!



Awesome , I'll give em a listen after I've finished with The Faceless (Y)


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## Stan P (Apr 10, 2010)

trying is the only answer


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## -One- (Apr 10, 2010)

Well, the bassist from UneXpect uses a touchstyle 9-string bass, and that's a pretty important part of their sound *shrug*


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## Tom MAF (Apr 10, 2010)

Stan P said:


> trying is the only answer



Yeh that's pretty much my conclusion :L


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## phantasm (Apr 11, 2010)

Didn't Sean Malone from Cynic use it back in the day? When I saw them I could swear he was using it. It was a long time ago. I think They opened for Carcass on the Heartwork tour.


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## Tom MAF (Apr 11, 2010)

Oooooo, Cynic... Yumm!


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## SD83 (Apr 11, 2010)

-One- said:


> Well, the bassist from UneXpect uses a touchstyle 9-string bass, and that's a pretty important part of their sound *shrug*


Does he? I always thought it was more of a "normal" 9 string bass...


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## leftyguitarjoe (Apr 11, 2010)

SD83 said:


> Does he? I always thought it was more of a "normal" 9 string bass...



Yeah. It looks like a normal bass that he just does some tapping on.


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## Konfyouzd (Apr 11, 2010)

Replying strictly to the thread title...

Is a chapman stick/warr guitar suitable for metal? That's completely up to you. 

Behold the Arctopus uses one I think. There are no rules as to how an instrument has to be used. If that were the case they'd come w/ an instruction manual that says "This instrument is to be used for the following genres:..."

Short answer: YES


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## 4jfor (Apr 13, 2010)

Metal Ken mentioned the NS/Stick earlier, seriously check it out, its designed to be like hybrid touchstyle/regular picking/plucking whatever. And Ned's a smart man.
Here's a link www.stick.com - Instruments and Tunings

EDIT: It even has a retractable string damper


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## Customisbetter (Apr 13, 2010)

Konfyouzd said:


> Behold the Arctopus



oh god please no.


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## -One- (Apr 13, 2010)

leftyguitarjoe said:


> Yeah. It looks like a normal bass that he just does some tapping on.


I've seen video of him playing normal and touchstype nine-strings, I believe.
Or he just tapped a whole song xD


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## Uroboric Forms (Apr 30, 2010)

The only times that I can think of that Chapman Sticks and Warr guitars have been used in metal (off the top of my head) are during the intro of Textures by Cynic, where Sean Malone used a chapman stick, and during part of Supercrush by Devin Townsend where he uses a warr guitar to beef out the melody. I know there are many more, but that all I can think of


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## Variant (Apr 30, 2010)




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## extremophileX (Jul 5, 2010)

Yeah, it can be, check behold the arctopuss, or this other guy, on myspace/viraemiaaz, +u could always use a thumb pick to tremolo pick 2 on the fretboard


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## LamaSabachthani (Jul 5, 2010)

MaxOfMetal said:


> It's a wooden, fretted, string instrument. The same principles that govern guitars' tone such as wood selection, pickups, string gauges, amp settings, etc, apply in the same way.
> 
> While you may not like Colin Marston's playing, or his band (Behold...The Arctopus) you should really look into the techniques he employs to do tremolo picking, riffing, etc. As of right now he's just about the only guy I've seen playing heavy, technical music on a touch style instrument.



Cor..Bloody hell! Just checked them out (Alcoholocaust)... very bizzare, but very interesting. His guitar almost sounds like Les Claypool playing bass haha. Gotta give it to the other guitarist as well... first shredder in a while that I've heard using what sounds like a fairly straightforward plug-in-and-play tone. Good man.


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## LamaSabachthani (Jul 5, 2010)

Tom MAF said:


> Ooooo :L, yeh you are right though
> Don't worry I'm not in some sort of generic metal band, we do whatever really as long as it's proggy, I just don't want to end up with it sounding too linear... IDK really.... Bollocks I think we'll just have to go get one and try it out and if it doesn't work then we'll have to sell it or use it do shitty covers of jazz standards, final fantasy music or the mario theme tune...



 hilarious because, sadly, that's all these frankly rather interesting and unique instruments ever get used for...


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