The Chapman Stick is a musical instrument devised by Emmett Chapman in the early 1970s.
He set out to create an instrument designed for his unique two-handed tapping technique,
which he discovered on guitar in 1969. The first production model of the Chapman Stick was shipped in 1974.

Superficially, it looks like a wide version of the fretboard of an electric guitar with 8, 10 or 12 strings mounted on it,
but it is longer than a guitar. Unlike the electric guitar, it is usually played by tapping or fretting the strings with the fingertips of both hands,
rather than plucking them. 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 to a keyboard instrument than to other stringed instruments.
This arrangement lends itself to playing multiple lines at once and many Stick players have mastered performing bass,
chords and melody lines simultaneously.......