Came for a Watermelon in Easter Hay reference, left happy.

He used to cut my grass, he was a very nice boy!

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Xenochrony

Friendly Little Finger (04:17); 1975, recorded in a dressing room at Hofstra University and over-dubbed at the Record Plant, Los Angeles, California; originally released on the Warner Brothers album Zoot Allures; [...] This is one of the earliest examples of a technique I developed called Xenochrony (strange synchronizations). Other examples include "Rubber Shirt" on Sheik Yerbouti and every guitar solo on Joe's Garage except "Watermelon In Easter Hay". In this technique various tracks from unrelated sources are randomly synchronized with each other to make a final composition with rhythmic relationships unachievable by other means. In ordinary polyrhythmic terms we speak of 5 in the space of 4, or 7 in the space of 6. In Xenochrony we deal with larger units of time; a complete solo at one metronomic rate in the space of a track at another ... sort of like Monday and Tuesday crammed into the space of Wednesday. The solo and drone bass was recorded on a 2-track Nagra, 15 ips, with a pair of Neumann U-87 microphones in a rather wet-sounding dressing room, warming up before a concert at Hofstra University on Long Island. This pair of tracks was later Xenochronized to a drum track out-take from "The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution". The introductory orchestration was added next, and then the Hofner bass (recorded at half-speed), rhythmically splitting the difference between the two different track tempos.

~The Guitar World According To Frank Zappa

 

Zappa dubbed the technique "xenochrony," from the Greek words xeno (strange or alien) and chrono (time). As he explained, "In this technique, various tracks from unrelated sources are randomly synchronized with each other to make a final composition with rhythmic relationships unachievable by other means." For example, in the case of the Zoot Allures track "Friendly Little Finger," the solo guitar and bass were recorded in a dressing room on a 2-track Nagra and then later combined with an unrelated drum track for a piece called "The Ocean Is The Ultimate Solution," with additional instrumentation scored to complement the newly produced time signatures. Xenochrony proved to be a powerful new compositional tool for Zappa, and he returned to it many times over later albums.

~WE ARE The Mothers... AND THIS IS WHAT WE SOUND LIKE!

 

Well, a classic "xenochrony" piece would be "Rubber Shirt", which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album. It takes a drum set part that was added to a song at one tempo. The drummer was instructed to play along with this one particular thing in a certain time signature, eleven-four, and that drum set part was extracted like a little piece of DNA from that master tape and put over here into this little cubicle. And then the bass part, which was designed to play along with another song at another speed, another rate in another time signature, four-four, that was removed from that master tape and put over here, and then the two were sandwiched together. And so the musical result is the result of two musicians, who were never in the same room at the same time, playing at two different rates in two different moods for two different purposes, when blended together, yielding a third result which is musical and synchronizes in a strange way. That's xenochrony. And I've done that on a number of tracks.

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anyway i don't think he used it on this song, first section is 11/8 then i just lose my marbles... one of my favorites!!!

btw, i did a cover of the song above ^^^^

this is fantastic!!! all guitar solos on this album came from recordings done live in concerts and then stuffed in backing tracks in the studio... i wonder if the mix was done in analogue or digital... tape vs daw... 79? it was tape? 

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Joe's Garage Acts I, II & III

Guitar Solos & Special Engineering

FZ, c. September 26, 1984 ("Picture Disc Interview")

All the guitar solos on Joe's Garage came from the European tour in 1980. They were recorded on a 2-track Nagra, just 2 microphones in front of my guitar amplifier and every time I played a solo the guy turned it on and recorded just the guitar. And when we did the Joe's Garage album I found the solos I liked and put them on top of the studio tracks and that's what's in there.

Mark Pinske, interviewed by Chris Michie, Mix, January 1, 2003

Mix: Zappa makes references to the guitar solos on Joe's Garage, which he says were recorded on a 2-track Nagra, which only had guitar on it, and somebody would just turn it on for solos and then turn it off again.
Pinske: I think Claus Wiedemann had something to do with that. That was before my time, as well, when they were doing a lot of the Nagra stuff.

 

2. SCENE THIRTEEN: Keep It Greasey

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• See also ARF: Notes & Comments.

FZ, interviewed by Paul Colbert, Musicians Only, January 26, 1980

The solo in "Keep It Greasey"—the rhythm background I think is in 21/16 and the guitar is in 11/4. The beats come together about once a month ..?

Vinnie Colaiuta, interviewed by Robyn Flans, Modern Drummer, November, 1982

RF: There was one song, "Keep It Greasey", where I wonder how you were thinking of the time signature.

VC: There's this one part where the actual time signature is 19/16. The feel is like it is 4/4 with three 16th notes tacked onto the end of it. Then there's another part in 21. It was all one live take; no splices or adds or anything. We just rehearsed it. We used to play it on the road and Frank said, "Okay, we're going to elongate that in the studio and that's going to be a solo. You're just going to vamp out until I give you a cue and then we'll go into something else." And bingo, he gave us a cue and zipp, we were in 19/16. We just cut that track with guitar, bass and drums. I don't recall if there was electric piano in that particular solo section or not. We went to Village Recorders one day and just churned out tune after tune, all live, no edits or anything.

Arthur Barrow, Of Course I Said Yes!, 2016, p. 91

Up until the time we got into the studio, we had always played that song in a normal 4/4 time signature, but Frank decided he wanted to do a new version for the recording. The choruses were to stay in 4/4, but the verses were to be changed to odd times: 19/16 and 21/16. As we played the odd time tracks for the verses, he sang more or less in 4/4 over what we were doing in 19 or 21. We were to play the vamp until he reached the end of a verse, then transition back to 4/4 on the choruses. We never knew how many times we would play the vamp before going into the transition.

 

5. SCENE SIXTEEN: Packard Goose

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• See also ARF: Notes & Comments.

Arthur Barrow, "Frank Zappa," Arthur Barrow's Page

I'll never forget standing next to Vinnie counting and praying during the incredible drum work in the middle of "Goose." He was doing stuff that was turning my brains inside out—I could hardly believe we pulled it off.

FZ, interviewed by Paul Colbert, Musicians Only, January 26, 1980

I came back [from the road] with a stereo Nagra tape of just guitar solos and thought of songs where they could go. You try to find something that's in the same key but the time signature could be different. In "Packard Goose", the backing is in 4/4 and the solo was played in 15/16 in a totally different tempo. It was from the last show in Zurich during a song called "Easy Meat".

 

6. SCENE SEVENTEEN: Watermelon In Easter Hay

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• See also ARF: Notes & Comments.

Steve Vai, The Frank Zappa Guitar Book, 1982, p. 5

The guitar solos from Joe's Garage (except "Watermelon In Easter Hay") were solo tracks that were taken from different live concerts through the years and printed on studio rhythm tracks.

FZ, interviewed by Den Simms & Rob Samler, Society Pages, September, 1991

The only guitar solo that was "played" in Joe's Garage was "Watermelon In Easter Hay."

 

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shit, this song sounds like sonic youth!!!

  On 6/30/2020 at 11:35 PM, Tim_J said:

shit, this song sounds like sonic youth!!!

 

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 Wow this is fucking immense 

How has nobody mentioned Burnt Weeny Sandwich or Civilization Phase III yet?

here's 2 more versions of watermelon:

the man did some idm chunes as well:

  On 7/12/2020 at 5:29 PM, Tim_J said:

the man did some idm chunes as well:

 

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This is the worst music I ever heard. Can we please ban Tim_J for spamming this shit

You're the worst thing ever made by your mother... 

fuck me

It's good stuff. Incredibly diverse and probably one of the artists whose work you can really dive into and get lost in and end up listening to almost exclusively for a good while without it getting boring. My dad used to listen to a lot of Zappa. Have to give him a closer look

  On 7/24/2020 at 12:30 AM, dingformung said:

It's good stuff. Incredibly diverse and probably one of the artists whose work you can really dive into and get lost in and end up listening to almost exclusively for a good while without it getting boring. My dad used to listen to a lot of Zappa. Have to give him a closer look

These are enough for a whole year:

Just bought this:

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The purpose of this site is to provide a little help to those that are looking for written material about Frank Zappa.

https://www.afka.net/index.htm

  On 10/17/2022 at 7:42 AM, iococoi said:

https://www.afka.net/index.htm

wikizappa innit bruv?

  On 7/12/2020 at 5:29 PM, cruising for burgers said:

the man did some idm chunes as well:

 

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I like the basement music stuff alright, though it's pretty simple compared to some of the other synthy stuff he did later on. Civilization Phase III is nuts in the best way, though I can't claim to really enjoy most of it.

Have you ever heard the tape of answering machine messages he created? A bunch of 30 second versions of his famous pieces and some short originals, mostly made on a synclavier. The version I heard has a synclavier version of Zoot Allures at the end, which sounds like hold music for hell. Really dig that stuff.

  On 10/26/2022 at 1:28 AM, Dave3 said:

I like the basement music stuff alright, though it's pretty simple compared to some of the other synthy stuff he did later on. Civilization Phase III is nuts in the best way, though I can't claim to really enjoy most of it.

Have you ever heard the tape of answering machine messages he created? A bunch of 30 second versions of his famous pieces and some short originals, mostly made on a synclavier. The version I heard has a synclavier version of Zoot Allures at the end, which sounds like hold music for hell. Really dig that stuff.

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yeah civilization is a hard pass for me, couldn't get into it as well... gotta get my hand on that tape though, thanks for the heads up...