The 12-Tone Music of Frank Zappa
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- čas přidán 4. 07. 2024
- Recently, I shared a video of myself playing an obscure 12-tone piece by Frank Zappa called "Waltz for Guitar" and got some mixed reactions. So here's a video breaking down the music and some of the history behind it!
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Once someone said to Picasso: "I could have done that too." Picasso replied: "Yes, but you didn't".
I love that
From a capitalistic perspective i get that but artistically... I'm the first guy to say ohgritommawebblywsrithymekhammensoobaqueriftymanplumbushavenyomethome. So what. It's not instantly imbued w merit There's gotta be more substance than simply first.
But on the flip side anyone with a keyboard could type out crime and punishment. But could they conceive of it and manifest it before its existence? Unless their name is Dostyrvsky, they didn't. So the 1st guy was wrong in his thinking and Picasso of course was right
Picasso also said " I do something first, then someone else comes along and does it "pretty" !
Keep Franks music alive!
Love this video!
There are remnants of this early 12 tone piece one can find in Zappa's song "Brown Shoes Don't Make It" and in his musical "The Adventures Of Greggery Peccary". It's in there.
That's right!
"We see, in the back, of the city hall mind, the dream, of a girl, about 13."
What a delightful little piece of music.
I just watched a biopic of Frank Zappa and immediately wondered what 12-Tone would make of it... voila!
Here I am!
Thank you, Alex Rockwell.
You have given me some meaning to Zappa's obsession.
I heard the Zappa Waltz and loved it, I knew he was into abstract stuff but had no idea. Thanks for that and yea over 100 years later 12 tone is still stepped on. So sad, but understandable
So nicely explained, and the emancipation of dissonance says it all.
I just now subscribed ONLY because you said you recently played a 12-tone guitar composition by Frank Zappa. I ADORE serial music & Frank Zappa!!! That was a great intro to serialism (for those who need an intro…). I already love your channel!
Thanks man! It was a fun little project!
love his work!!
Thank you for this it helped me understand a bit more , always loved Zappos music
Very interesting and well explained.
Thanks I loved the video. I found that very interesting but by the end I was surprised to find that I liked it. Thanks again!
I am a huge Zappa fan but am not great at understanding what makes a piece of music. Wonderful to find your measured response.
You realize this was Zappa's secretary who just commented above!? Hi Pauline. You are more than a fan. I know!!!
@@delpage1 Interesting how paths cross all over the web! Hello delpage1.
Wow! Great video! I’ve always loved Frank Zappa’s music …Just recently I learned about this type of music and I find something about it incredibly intriguing and beautiful. I even started composing a few of my own pieces. -And after seeing this video I think it’s cool Zappa was into too. For real, thanks for making a great video explaining it. Trying to learn it from a composition book is like trying to learn music from “how to build a radio instructions manual.”
Should be fun to learn play it. Thanks for showing it👍
Nice one. Keep on nerding out!
Zappa fan and music nerd here: fantastic explanation and examples. Subbed.
People with no music theory will not understand. Frank Zappa was a genius....not because he wrote a crab canon but judged by his life's work.
Genius.
Thank you
Adventures in listening! Carry on. 🙏
I just listened to the Mothers playing "Whipping Post' , and the solo Frank did was definitely not typical of Dicky Betts!
It actually sounded a bit discordant and angular in a piece that flows. He is best in his own context.
That one's brilliant
Don't feel bad. Even Zappa didn't like a lot of his 12-tone music once he finally heard it performed though he says he isn't sure if it was the music or the performance but hering it caused him to head into a tonal and free atonality direction. The only time we hear 12-tone from Zappa after he became famous or infamous is a short section in Brown Shoes Don't Make It.
Love it or hate it... but just brilliant explanation
I think its beatiful.... ❤
The only thing that always bugs me a little bit about the primers on 12-tone music I hear people give, is the emphasis on "not repeating a note until the row is complete". This is somewhat true, but doesn't actually describe how the rows are used in actual compositions. That is to say: usually there are more than one variants of the row sounding simultaneously, often the row is partitioned to form both verticals and horizontals, repeats of notes are common in both first and second cases. The row is a deep structure which can generate many different surface structures. Notes do, in fact, repeat, all the time.
Yes yes, that is true. And perhaps we could be clearer about that in the primers, but I didn't want to go too far down the rabbit hole of what is possible with 12-tone music in the context of this particular video.
Kudos to all the nirds! I did listen to your first video, and, yes, I found it kind of short and boring… But, your little lecture was interesting and fun. Thank you!👍
I love Zappa and although I don't really like atonal music I think atonal music sounds impressively consistent and interesting
Easy listening implies the existence of hard listening
czcams.com/video/ex9eGS6QoSc/video.html microtones/trance
OP, if you can find any (I just went looking and it seems he's taken everything down) check out John (Jon?) Cutler, aka "JC and the Microtones" One of the cuts was titled "Cow People." I'm a drummer and this stuff blew me away. I'm really bummed I can't find any of it now.
That electronic tune is cool. I don't really dig into microtonal music much, mostly because I have no way to play it. Also, a lot of examples of microtonal music that gets recommended to me, through an algorithm or not, tend to be all "look, it's microtonal" but the music itself doesn't have enough redeeming qualities for me to care. Like people are geeking out over the 31edo stuff but are forgetting to write good music with it.
Anyway, small rant. The tune you shared is really cool. I like how it has a not-quite-right quality to it. I couldn't find anything from JC and the Microtones either. Too bad, I'd be curious to hear it.
@@alexrockwellmusic He was a kid in my hometown, a passing chum of my younger step-brother in the early 70s. I HAD (and may still in some drawer somewhere) a low-quality recording of JC's stuff.
Now I must engage in a search just because its worth the effort. I just hope at this point that there is a good reason it's missing, not a horrible one.
I'll report back if I find it. But htf am I supposed to upload a cassette? lol
You'd have to buy a cassette to mp3 converter. They're pretty cheap, you can get one for like 30 bucks on Amazon. I hope you can find it!
@@alexrockwellmusic I operate most of the time on the "no news is good news" principle, but in this case I will give you a shout if I find it. Cheers! And thanks!
''Trained and educated ear to appreciate and understand this music ''. So if I have an untrained ear then I won't appreciate it ,ever , no chance ? Tad arrogant. BTW I love some of this 12 tone stuff. The average listener ? Where do we find one of those? I'm all for dissonance ,as you can tell by reading this.
-''Trained and educated ear to appreciate and understand this music ''.
Would it have offended you less if I inserted the word "typically" in that sentence?
-So if I have an untrained ear then I won't appreciate it ,ever , no chance ? Tad arrogant.
Even if you take my obvious generalization literally, the word "untrained" does not suggest a state of permanence.
-BTW I love some of this 12 tone stuff.
That's awesome dude, me too!
-The average listener ? Where do we find one of those?
On the street would be a good place to look I suppose. If you were to play 12-tone music for a random person, I would bet money they would react negatively to it.
-I'm all for dissonance ,as you can tell by reading this.
Me too bro.
From what I've heard, writing 12 tone (atonal) music is incredibly difficult as if not done correctly you will allude to a tonal center which defeats the purpose. It sounds very eerie but I appreciate the complexity of it all. Thanks!
That's true. I've found what's even harder is making something you'd want to listen to while still following the rules.
I sometimes wonder why I continue to be drawn to Zappa after all these years, in spite of how irritating I often find both him and his music to be. I wonder if a part of it is that he was a kind of bridge between the European art music tradition (which declined significantly in the second half of the 20th century) and the music and accompanying discourse which largely replaced it. I just thought of this possibility, thinking about what you say here.
What a great video man
Really works for death metal, though.
Zappa is the law of the land. Period. I have used 12tone in my compositions, it´s a great source of rules-based disorder.
Those who don’t like 12 tone are HARMONIC CHUMPS
YEAH
It has intelligence ! Aliens would listen to a tonal music!
I will smoke you on guitar ,,,,,,,,,,,,from Steve vie
~ That piece is quite ugly; I remember buying the magazine you mention. Though I can play several instruments and understand theory, I have never been a very good sight reader. I wanted to play this piece but couldn't do it. Again, lousy sight reader, so it was interesting, scratching an itch, so to speak, to hear how it sounds.
Glad I was able to satisfy your curiosity. It is a bit jarring, but you learn to hear beauty in all the dissonance over time.
You should not speak with such hubris about a subject you know nothing about. You are regurgitating myths about how 12 tone music is composed. What scores have you actually studied? And have you even tried writing what you say in a composition? It’s impossible to do what you are prescribing. That’s why nobody composed serial music that way. Have you even read Schoenberg s 1923 article on how to write it? You have no idea what you are talking about.
What scores have I studied? Off the top of my head, Schoenberg's first serial piece, which was Op. 25, No. 5 if I recall, as well as assorted miniatures by Webern, some Berg scores. This Zappa Waltz, obviously. Some Babbitt works, Boulez. Some others I'm sure, it's been a while. I'm not sure what you mean when you say it's impossible to do what I'm "prescribing" when the example I'm providing in the video does exactly that. I realize that there is not a singular way to employ 12-tone techniques, but for the sake of an introductory video, I stuck to the gist.
Have I tried to do what I say in a composition? Yes. Two of my guitar compositions use serial techniques, both using 10-tone rows instead of the typical 12. Both of them apply the techniques in different ways. I don't have recordings of them available at this time, as they're currently being mixed for my first album. So, you can just believe me, I guess. Or don't, I don't really care.
Have I read Schoenberg's 1923 article? Yes, I think so, but it's been a long time. I studied this music in my undergrad, which was several years ago.
Funny thing though, since I made this video, I learned that Schoenberg was not even the first to develop a 12-tone technique. The composer and music theorist Josef Matthias Hauer developed something similar in 1919 independently of Schoenberg and the Second Viennese School, although Schoenberg's techniques are more aesthetically in line with what it ultimately evolved into.
@@alexrockwellmusic ...continued. Other first pages of scores: The Piano Concerto: The very first note Eb in the right hand is repeated in bar 2 in the left hand only after 7 notes have played. The F in the left hand bar 1 is repeated in the right hand bar 2 after 4 notes have been played. The E in the left hand in bar 1 is repeated in the right hand bar 2 only after 6 notes have been played. Same for the next C, D, and F, and on and on.
String Quartet No. 3: G in bar 1 is repeated in bar 2 in viola after 4 notes have played. E in bar 1 repeats in bar 2 in viola after 4 notes have played. D# in bar 1 repeats in viola in bar 2 after 4 notes have played. And on and on over and over.
Variations for Orchestra: bars 3 through 18 has hundreds of examples where a note is played and reappears before all other 11 have sounded. In very obvious context and would take pages and pages to cite each occurrence. Also note the ostinato pattern of repeated notes in the cello on Variation VIII.
Klavierstuck Op 33: D# bar 5 repeats in bar 6 after 7 notes. B in bar 8 repeats later in the measure after 7 notes. Etc.
String Quartet No. 4: Bar 8 C# in Vln II repeated 2 octaves lower in Viola same bar after 5 notes. Bb in bar 9 is repeated in bar 10 after 9 notes.
String Trio: Multiple examples on page 1 in all 3 instruments.
@@alexrockwellmusic ...continued. The mythic "rule" you are quoting doesn't make practical sense in composition. If you couldn't repeat a note until the other 11 were sounded, then you would never be able to use the other 47 transpositions/forms of the row. This is because the notes change order with each transposition/form you use. So any note will ALWAYS be earlier or later when a different transposition is selected (and if later, then another note will be earlier). It cannot be done.
There are two and only two methods of composing serial music. In any given texture, you can use the notes from the same row (Method A), or use the notes from two or more rows simultaneously (Method B). So if you had a melody and chords/accompaniment together, you could use the same row for all the notes (A), or use one row for the melody and another row for the chords/accompaniment (B). Those are your only choices. In Method B, notes will repeat before the other 11 have sounded. That's the only way it can be done. This is what happens in instances such as Schoenberg's Piano Concerto. He is using a row for the right hand melody (prime), and another row for the accompaniment left hand (retrograde inversion). That's why the notes repeat in this instance. Other times, he is using a technique called "segmentation" where the row is divided up into equal parts and say the first four notes are used as an ostinato figure and so are repeated while another segment of the row is the melody. This is like the String Quartet No. 3 example.
For Method A, you would need to write very short pieces and use the vertical-horizontal method of assigning notes. That is too detailed to go into here, but that is what Webern did in a couple pieces. It is a very limited technique. Also, it doesn't work in solo pieces where an instrument can only play 1 note. In that case, all you would have is an isomelody if they followed your silly "rule" because it would be the same notes over and over again in the same order throughout the piece. But professional serial composers don't do that (see Krenek's solo cello pieces). Also, it gives the piece the sound of randomness (random notes playing). Being able to repeat notes as shape and cohesion to the music as well as give the music identity.
@@alexrockwellmusic Again, you have made the classic blunder most armchair “teachers” of serialism make of equivocating the ROW ITSELF with a MELODY. As Schoenberg emphasized, a row is a group of notes from which MELODIES CAN BE MADE, just as much a scale is a group of notes from which melodies can be made. Notes of the row can be repeated one at a time or repeated in groups, and (gasp) even out of order depending on what method you are using (such as the horizontal-vertical method), or appear out of order to suit contrapuntal or expressive needs, notes of the row can also be (gasp) omitted if one so chooses (all of these claims are supported by the Brindle book on serial composition).
The 12-tone system is not a "paint-by-number" system in which each-and-every note of the row is equal to each-and-every note of the melody. Note-for-note. No repetitions. No change of order. No different methods of composing with the notes. If that were the case, then EVERY SINGLE PIECE WOULD SOUND EXACTLY THE SAME. Do they? Does Schoenberg’s Violin Concerto sound like Berg’s? AT ALL? Does Webern’s Symphony sound like Stravinsky’s Threni?
There is no law that states a melody must be confined to neatly fit a row perfectly (or vice versa) either, in case anyone is wonder (another popular myth). You can make a melody out of 6 notes of the row and use the next 6 of the row in the next phrase or chord or whatever you wish. You can use up all 12 notes of a row and then use the next 3 or 4 of the next transformation to finish the melody, etc. You can also keep using transformation after transformation of rows to complete the melody you are trying to achieve until you are done. You can go on for 100 bars writing a melody this way if you want. So, I don't see the problem with the method you described.
@@alexrockwellmusic And are you aware that there are several different ways of composing with a tone row, not just one? You could use the Segmentation technique and use notes 1-6 as a melody over 7-12 accompaniment, then switch to a new transformation and do 7-12 over 1-6 and do it again with another and again and again. When this happens, there is no appearance of the 12-tone row in the melody, ever, and you can really make for some thematic ideas more easily as notes will repeat more often naturally.
You should look at Boulez’s Notations for piano also to look at how much repetition even an “ultra serialist” uses, especially Notation No. 2. And check out George Rochberg’s Symphony No. 2, especially Mvt I to see how incredible melodies and harmonies can be, audibly and expressively. Not “boring” at all.
Most people? Your opinions on this topic are grossly simplistic & dogmatic. There is no necessary either or between different approaches to tonality & all the rest of it.
If I were to play 12-tone music for a random person on the street, would you bet money that they would like it, or that they would not like it?
I think I would agree that I take a simplistic view in that 12-tone music is neither good nor bad. It simply is what it is. It's a perfectly valid approach to composition, and anyone is free to employ the techniques involved in whatever way they like. So, I don't know where you're getting dogmatism from that, unless you're referring to my objectively correct assertion that most people (not musicians) will react negatively to their first exposure to 12-tone music.
@@alexrockwellmusic "Objectively correct assertion"? Is it based on an actual survey? & what genre? You know a lot of stuff but you can't see the forest, because of the trees.
Am I to take it that you hold the opposite to be true? That 12-tone serialism is enjoyed by a wide span of the music-consuming population? That it's just as accessible music as Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, etc.?
@@alexrockwellmusicAll music is accessible. Their popularity one way or another doesn't determine that.
People don't know how to listen to music. FZ
Who are all these nobodies who set themselves up as experts and "scholars" with farty little CZcams videos? If you don't know what serial music is, then perhaps this fellow will give you some idea, okay, fine---but why sit and listen to him self-importantly prattle on for 12 minutes? Especially when the video is entitled "The Twelve-Tone Music of Frank Zappa," and barely deals with Zappa at all. Something he does not get into is that twelve-tone (serial) music discards/ignores/vetoes the idea of music having an emotional impact. Serial music is sound sculpture, and does not express the vast range of emotion that most tonal music does. It is a valid form, but does not set out to move the listener in the way that tonal music does. He ignores this, and simply presents it dispassionately, as if it is something perfectly fine, but "controversial!" What a laugh.
Thanks for your bizarrely presumptuous comment. I have a graduate degree in music performance, so I've studied this stuff a reasonable amount. I wouldn't call myself the preeminent expert on serial music, but I have studied it in a scholarly setting enough to equip me to make "farty little CZcams videos" about it.
But your main criticism here is that I neglected to say directly that serial music disregards emotions? That single detail? Even if I did not use your words, I believe I sufficiently implied that that is the case. I wanted to present the historical context behind this music in such a way that allows newcomers to begin to form their own opinions on it.
You do seem to be quite knowledgeable on the subject though. Could you share some of your work discussing or presenting the history of serial music? I'm curious to see it.
Yawn. Your passive-aggressive pose is as transparent as ignorance. @@alexrockwellmusic