The guy I know who invented a 40-string instrument
Twelve years ago, I moved to the city of Milwaukee, where I didn't really know anyone and had a lot of free time on my hands. Since there were only so many coffee shops I could visit in a day, I started playing open mics with my trusty 'ol Washburn acoustic guitar.
I probably wasn't any good. But I kept at it, playing dozens of times at numerous venues through the city's Riverwest and East Side neighborhoods. My fingers were fully calloused and my voice raspy, but I never made my breakthrough into becoming the next Elliott Smith that I dreamed of becoming. Probably for the best.
The reason I bring this up is because I met a really interesting dude who was working as the bartender at one of these open mics. His name is Jim Bartz, and he has a really fascinating hobby: He's been chasing his dream of building a 40-string instrument for close to two decades.
The device, which he calls the Stringstation, works like this: the instrument combines a traditional six-string electric guitar with elements of other stringed instruments such as a chapman stick and lap steel guitars. Bartz's concept instrument, which I've seen him play live a few times, is a pretty fascinating device that manages to cull out a wide array of noises from a stringed instrument hooked up to an odd array of electronics.
It's actually an extension of something he's been reaching for throughout his career—the idea of culling as much atmosphere out of his music as possible. In 1987, he created an album called Pictures of Earth and Space that notably emphasized that Bartz didn't use any synthesizers to create the atmospherics that envelop the album.
The Stringstation is very much in that vein—as you can see from this live performance he did in 2011, he pulls a lot of life out of a bunch of strings. The playing strategies he uses combine elements of different types of guitar-playing, like finger-tapping, along with styles that would be more traditional associated with a harp or similar large stringed instrument.
"I want to make an epic music statement that is sublime and beautifully seductive in ways we didn't know sonics could be," Bartz told the website It's Psychedelic, Baby! in 2013—adding that he considers the creation of music with the completed instrument his "life long mission."
I eventually lost touch with Jim—he moved to one city, and I moved to another at roughly the same time—but he's still been working away at the instrument, which at this point only exists in prototype form. His instrument, and his passion for it, is a hard thing to forget, however.
Like the sustain on some of the strings he plucks, that passion sticks with you for a good long time.
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