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La
Portada : Emmett Chapman (1936-2021)
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El pasado día
1 de noviembre falleció Emmet Chapman. Una triste noticia. Músico
e inventor de un instrumento
singular. En 2019
el instrumento cumplió 50 años de existencia. El legado que
deja tras de sí es enorme.
A muchos músicos
les cambió su percepción interpretativa. Hasta el punto que
el Chapman Stick, en sus variantes
y evoluciones, se
convirtió en instrumento principal e incluso una migración
total.
Gestar un instrumento
desde un prototipo hasta una versión comercial requiere tiempo,
fondos en principio a fondo
perdido ya que la
amortización de la inversión no entra en la ecuación.
Y sobre todo fe y constancia.
Otro gran ejemplo
puede ser Les Paul con el modelo de guitarra electrica de cuerpo sólido
fabricado por Gibson.
A mediados de este
año. Empecé una entrevista con él. Mediante el sistema
"postal" de emails pregunta y respuesta.
Solo pude formularle
dos preguntas. A causa de su estado de salud no fue posible continuar.
Para mí era la
"entrevista madre"
para conocer los detalles más técnicos del instrumento a
traves del propio creador. |
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Mr Emmett Chapman
is the central person in the story of an instrument invented in the 1969.
Much has been written
on the subject. From the official page to the brief summaries that appear
on social
networks. I will
not discover anything new. Just ... before the possibility when conducting
an interview, I would
not want to be trivial
and miss the opportunity to get to know this person better in his own words.
Given that the majority
of users were born after the decade of the 80s (I suppose) it is very important
to enter
the situation of
the time where we started the interview
.
During the 60s.
Discarding the orthodoxy of the offers of the manufacturers of musical
instruments. You as a guitarist.
Had you the concern
for “beyond” of what did you could get with a guitar?
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Ironically, now,
51 years after my creation of the "free hands” technique on my 9-string
guitar, my answer would have
to be the same as
then in 1969, that is, free expressive melody with the right hand accompanied
by left hand bass
with piano styled
chordal voicings, all from one instrumentalist.
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From the prototype model
to the first instrument on the market . Did you have knowledge as a luthier
o "the specific
need invites you
to invent"?
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I built my first
elongated 9-string guitar out of a single piece of hard rock maple (neck
and body together) around
1965 in the US Air
Force wood shop at Omaha Nebraska. I had no experience as a luthier. In
August 1969 I created
the “free hands”
two-handed string tapping method on that instrument, then converted it
over a couple of days for
very low tapping
“action”, the double strap system, and added a damper to quiet down ringing
of open strings.
The angle I always
chose from first prototypes to today has been about 30 degrees. Some players
like it closer to
20 and others to
45 degrees. It has a double strap system that I used around the first prototype
with the oval guitar
body, one strap
behind the back and the other over the left shoulder..
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