Let's be Frank...All things Zappa!

I was amazed (and so fucking happy) to recently stumble across several videos of young musicians with an interest (and the skill) to cover Zappa. I had no idea that was happening. I play guitar some, but most of Zappa's music is well beyond my ability (to play or to even try to break down and analyze). Here are some kids, more than 40 years later, covering Montana:

heckler73 said:

Speaking of Varese...If one wants to really comprehend Zappa's mechanics, one has to dig into his sources. Unfortunately, this requires using the left-hemisphere. It requires reducing music into metrics; Little Dots (Wot m8? Is that a plug?), pitch, time signatures, keys, etc.
But along with the more mundane theory, there are the DIFT(S).
Now, you know that 'S' is up to something, and it's not an accident, either.
Duration
Intensity
Frequency
Timbre
Space (sometimes)
These were the elements Varese pondered, and that last one was crucial in the grand cartoon of Zappa's compositional technique, as he has noted several times in interviews. To that end, here is a video that discusses Varese's Deserts in that kind of nerdy detail. But have a gander, you may come away with a far more profound appreciation for those seemingly random passages of Zappa. It turns out, he wrote them that way, to paraphrase Steve Vai (OH...snap. CCST strikes again! But wait...is this a footnote or part 2a?)

Click to expand...

Wowie Kazowie!
Great post(s) @heckler73!
Edifying as well as entertaining!
Please continue your sterling CCST at your leisure, good sir

Thanks for your contributions!

Here are two young female composer/musicians who (to my ears) are evocative of FZ.

Wavels said:

Here are two young female composer/musicians who (to my ears) are evocative of FZ.

Click to expand...

I was going to post the Cheepnis studio outtakes with the two female singers as the focus--to maintain Conceptual Continuity--but someone beat me to it (oh yeah, it was you).
So, for the sake of CCST application (and a very complicated one, at that), here's the scene from "It Conquered the World" where the monster comes out of the cave, which is described in the song.
I remember seeing that movie for the first time way back when, waiting for the scene where the guy pushing the 2x4 has his hand (and board) show up in the frame...I thought it was all a joke when I heard Zappa describe it, but no; he was serious.
It's definitely worth watching at least once in your life (and still on YouTube, free). Shit...I actually had to go to a video store and pay money in order to see it!

Lee van Cleef?

a good song for the morning alarm to wake n bake to, positive start to the day

This doesn't need much preparation to appreciate.
It is some secret weirdness that has been molding over, fermenting in sweaty magnetic fields, deep in the bowels of some TV station's dungeon, flies all green and buzzing.
But in light of the recent foray into the theory c/o Mr Andreyev, revisiting the 'noisy' Mothers might be worthwhile.
The stage performance of Motorhead Sherwood is worth twice the price of admission, b'lieve me, it's true.

This is a possible goldmine.
It is a 2009 Doctoral thesis from Brett G. Clement that discusses the theory underlying Zappa's instrumental works.
He sourced some 150+ songs in his analysis, but I've only started digging into it.
From the abstract:


This dissertation offers the first large-scale analytical study of the instrumental music of Frank Zappa (1940-1993). Following initial commentary in Chapter 1 on the problems of categorization in the repertoire, Chapter 2 offers a preliminary discussion of style and form in Zappa's music. Regarding style, I detail the fallouts of Zappa's unique early musical education as well as the influence of his guitar playing in his compositional style. My investigation of form explores the formal implications of melodic repetition, examining non-repeating forms characteristic of the hybrid works and repeating forms utilizing variation procedures such as contour retention and isomelism.
Chapter 3 is devoted to rhythm and meter in Zappa's music. The primary topics of this chapter are various types of rhythmic/metrical conflict, including polymeter, metrical dissonance, and rhythmic dissonance, which are explained in part as an attempted merging of advanced compositional techniques and rock/pop music norms. A theoretical discussion of rhythmic dissonance, which is Zappa's trademark rhythmic device, comprises the bulk of the chapter.

Chapter 4 offers a Lydian theory for Zappa's diatonic music, loosely adapted from George Russell's seminal jazz theory The Lydian Chromatic Concept (1953). This theory views the Lydian scale as representing a tonic state in Zappa's music due to its special static attributes. It introduces the concept of a Lydian system, containing a limited group of diatonic modes related to a common Lydian scale. Within, I demonstrate how the pitch structures of non-Lydian modes are related abstractly to those of the Lydian tonic, and follow by considering pedal substitutions and progressions within the Lydian system.

Chapter 5 is devoted to Zappa's non-diatonic music. The first section of this chapter explores Zappa's methods of chromatic pitch organization, including pitch-class diversity, chromatic saturation, and symmetry. The second section investigates a system of composition based on a Chord Bible of Zappa's own devising. This section includes a preliminary recreation of certain aspects of Chord Bible and a discussion of the compositional employment of Chord-Bible harmony in the series of orchestral works composed circa 1977-1982.

I immediately jumped to chapter 5 when I saw that Chord Bible part. What in the hell could that be?
Follow the link and download it yourself.

https://etd.ohiolink.edu/pg_10?0::NO:10:P10_ETD_SUBID:82908#abstract-files

In June 1993, Zappa was having one of his 'better' days, and gave the world one final media interview before sliding back--a few days later--down the slope to his inevitable 'check-out' appointment a few months later.
It was a radio show he had done many times over the years, and perhaps it was a fitting venue for for him to have a little party with his fans.
Now the interview is unfortunately spaced out over 12 parts, but this sampler is somewhat fitting on several levels.
In it, a fax supposedly from Steven Hawking (a hot hot HOT topic in Politics, for about 15 minutes this week ) is read out, which is somewhat surprising at first, but what was more remarkable was the response Frank gave. Then again, he dedicated his book to him.
His hypothesis is interesting, but ...


The whole interview is full of thought provoking moments along with several WTFs, but would you really expect anything less from a typical day with Frank?
I didn't think so...
BTW if you want to know the secret of his 'clean sound' live and in the studio, you'll find it in the latter parts. It all comes down to where one places the effect, not just the type of effect.
(Is this a tripartite Conceptual Continuity junction post? Great googly moogly, the complexity deepens)

So how about that Stockhausen guy?

There's a record by Karlheinz Stockhausen on the Deutsche Gramophon label called "Gesang der Jünglinge", it's the "Song Of The Youths"; "Kontakte" ("Contact") is on the other side. Buy that (DGG 138811).

What's that, Uncle Frank? You want me to get into some wild composition from an eclectic genius, orphaned by 17, who spent his early life dealing with cadavers and misery in a time of nazis, assembling a work of music envisioned as a hymn, but completely using carefully constructed electronic noise "chords" and tape splicing (i.e. musique concrète) in an underground shelter during the mid '50s, before Elvis or any real glimmer of Rock and Roll entered on stage? You know, he made a lot of stuff, Frank, and the bulk of it being extremely complex and difficult to listen to. I mean, do you seriously want me to go down that entire path?

Some of his early pieces I thought were interesting. But once he got his PR going, I think that he stopped dealing with the real questions of what music is all about and got into the syndrome that most contemporary composers get themselves into, which is: ' . . . nobody wants a composer working at a university who can write a melody or actually a set of chord changes or even a rhythm that you can comprehend, so I have to write this ugly music so I can keep my job.' . . . it's a game of writing unintelligible swill. And as long as nobody can understand it, it's very easy for them to cover up the fact that it is not musical.

Oh. So would you consider him a big influence on your work, then?

Stockhausen isn't really an influence. That is, I have some of his records but I don't play them much. [John] Cage is a big influence.

O RLY? Well, I guess I'll have to look at him later.

Meanwhile, here's what Frank wanted us to hear. (GDJ is for the first 13:10, then a 30 sec break, going into Kontakte for the rest)

Samuel Andreyev (once again, coincidentally) has covered this piece in-depth, so I would recommend going to watch his analysis, if you feel so inclined. You'll likely be amazed when you see HOW he wrote this stuff on paper! CLICK HERE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zv-I-CNv3JI
I have to say, when I listen to it, I hear passages from We're Only In It For The Money, especially those "splash"-like sounds, such as the opening. Think Flower Punk and the opening hit of the instruments (probably made by cutting into the track at a peak wave of the signal). This technique shows up all over the place on the Mothers albums, if one listens carefully, as opposed to just hearing. As I am writing this, it is my first time listening to Kontakte and I can hear more "influence"...but that may take some brave ears to get that far, especially on a first try. GDJ is worth listening to, at least once. It's all a part of the Conceptual Continuity, people. You know you want it...make the effort. You'll love it. It's a way of life.

There is something else, important to note (again, tying back to the SPACE concept Zappa/Varese used in composition). This piece (Gesang der Jünglinge) was originally meant to be played in PENTAPHONIC sound! That's right, 5-way audio. Zappa experimented with QUADROPHONIA (the DVD release, quAUDIOphiliac is a perfect example), but Stockhausen was still one step above that!
But for Kontakte, he settled on quadro, perhaps realizing 5 speakers were superfluous?

In the event you're wondering why Pekka came onto Zappa's radar, check out his first solo release from 1972. It becomes pretty clear within the first 5 minutes. They would've been incredible on the same stage at that time.

Conceptual Continuity puzzle piece found!

The year, 1963...Zappa and Ray Collins decided to try making "surf" music.
The result is here for you to ponder. Is that Zappa "singing" opposite to Collins?
Surf surf surf surf...

Hmmm...A Subsidiary of Demented World Domination Inc.