How To Analyse Zappa's "Ugly" Melodies
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- čas přidán 30. 06. 2024
- A look at two common four-note cells that are recursive in Frank Zappa's non-tonal melodies.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
1:20 What is Pitch Class Set Theory?
3:16 PC Set [0,1,2,3] in Be-Bop Tango
5:20 The Be-Bop Tango Set Demonstrated On The Guitar
8:31 PC Set [0,1,2,3] in Touring Can Make You Crazy
9:44 PC Set [0,1,2,3] in Revised Music For Low Budget Symphony Orchestra and Duprees Paradise
11:14 PC Set Theory Used Haphazardly
11:50 PC Set [0,1,3,4] in Pedro's Dowry, The Perfect Stranger, Bob In Dacron and Mo 'N Herb's Vacation - Hudba
I play some guitar for fun because I love music so much. I have no idea what you talk about most of the time but I still love listening to you talk music. Thank you for these videos
You're welcome and thanks for watching.
I've always been able to *feel* Frank's music, but it took an intellect like yours to help me to *understand* it! Thanks for all of your hard work. I think yours is some of the most important work anyone's released (publicly) to get a grip on Frank's music.
Thank you.
@@ChananHanspalI agree; I love your wonderful videos; Not only are you an incredibly talented and hard-working guitarist and musician and analyzer of music, but I can tell you're a super nice guy. That would be awesome to hang out with; not that we're going to but I can just tell, and in addition to the fantastic content, your kind personality helps make watching even more enjoyable. ❤️👌🎸🎶👏👏👏👏
@@Gregorypeckory You are very kind indeed. Thank you for watching and best wishes.
Whoa. This starts to explain things in a way I didn't think I'd ever understand. O_O
You're cracking the code and sequencing the genome! Thank you so much. :)
Thank you.
I hear alot of ‘Busy making em’ s in his melodies.
Great work!!
Thank you.
Approximately 10mins in and realised I`d dribbled out of the corner of my mouth ! Sorry for the graphics, this is so interesting to me. I could never explain this so fluently. You are an amazing 'informer' of music Chanan. I reckon you might get a chance in Franks band but you better be on form mate 😉
Thank you.
Great comment; the opening cracked me up and I can relate; sometimes when I'm alone, (thank God nobody has caught me🙄😆) I get so involved in music that I'll catch myself starting to drool like a baby too! The apology was funny too! 😂🤣😂
(I actually shocked myself a couple of times when playing the guitar, concentrating a bit too hard, and had to wipe a little saliva from my fretboard; Don't tell anybody though. It's pretty embarrassing, a secret I plan to take to the grave 🙄😆)
This is brilliant! I’ve wondered about interval analysis for years. Well spoken, well presented. Best thing? It is intellectual and academic and well mannered. THAT is nowhere else, in my logarithms.
Thank you.
Thank you for providing all of your videos to us, it's truly a gift! btw you have an amazing speaking voice!
You're welcome and thank you for watching.
Music is (or is supposed to be) subjective, but I've never understood why some people call some music "ugly".
I mean, I can understand that it doesn't sound "good" to them, but I don't understand why so called ugly music is automatically bad?`
For just as you can enjoy beautiful music, it's just as valid to enjoy music that is harsh, uncompromising or even music that doesn't
care whether you like it or not.
I find that most composers try their best to write music that will appeal to the most people as possible. But Frank never did that.
He wrote what he wanted, and that's why it sounds the way it does: uniquely Frank!
I love ugly music
This is gonna sound odd, but the other day ZaPPa visited me in my dreams. U wasn't even thinking of Frank... And as a musician I asked Frank in this incredible SURREAL dream from Paesano to Paesano, how about a picture with both of us. He did smile and that's all I remember.
Thank you FRANCESCO ZAPPA 😁✌
How I would love to have seen you explaining these concepts to F.Z.
I wonder how he would have reacted: throw up something in the air (Like he did when Vinnie sight-read Mo 'n Herbs Vacation while eating sushi)? Sneer at it? Laugh out loud?
Too bad it's impossible to know, but this stuff is gold!
Thank you very much.
If I may add an excerpt from “ How The Pigs’Music Works
“Spider: Well, what it does is when it strikes any sort of energy field or solid object or even something as ephemeral as smoke, the first thing it does is begins to inactivate the molecular motion so that it slows down and finally stops. That's why the smoke stops. And also have you ever noticed how the the smoke clouds shrink up? That's because the molecules come closer together. The cold light makes it get so small, this is really brittle smoke”
gives new meaning to the musical phrase 1-2-3-4
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I wish you'd do a black page analysis. Rhythmic and melodic...
Love it, really clear demystification of these types of melodies in his catalogue. Sorry to say you fluffed your audition for the '88 band at 11mins😅 thanks again Chanan for videos, I'm recommending to all and sundry👍🏻
Thanks Mark. Best wishes.
Thank you very much for doing this kind of in-depth analysis to understand the typical Zappa melodies…
You're welcome and thanks for watching. Best wishes.
You and Steve Vai - together . is just such a great watch ... i actually believe you two should make some music - together ! 😉
That would be great!
Wow! An incredibly informative video on some of the interesting melody and harmony of Frank Zappa. It's also given me a lot of new knowledge of the guitar and music theory/practice. Very enjoyable too.
Yet another fantastic video
Thank you
Thank you.
I find giraffes filled with whipped cream quite soothing.
Great video as always.
Thank you.
... wow ... !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's where intellect meets the HEART !
Many thanks.
I always thought Zappa wrote music in code. Turns out I wasn't quite wrong! Thanks for all your content :)
You're welcome and thanks for watching.
Love your channel. Greetings from Chile!
Many thanks and greetings to you.
I love your videos!
Thank you.
Thanks for the analysis! It brings some other tunes in the Zappa catalogue into perspective. I think 'Let's Move to Cleveland' has the 0-1-2-3 set in the order 2-3-0-1. And while it's not a Zappa tune per se is nevertheless falls within his repertoire, Bartók's opening theme to the Third Piano Concerto contains a gorgeous instance of that cell, a pickup phrase of three 32nd notes, A, G, F#, finishing the phrase in the next measure with two 32nd notes G#, E. The melody continues with some further chromatic saturation, bouncing up from E to A#, then up to B. It's times like these that I wish CZcams comments could support Lilypond :)
Fantastic ! I always wondered how he made the atonal phrases in his music, because I know that he abandoned 12-tone serialism early on because it was too rigid of a form, but you can still tell that there is a method to it. It kind of seems to me that you could use pitch-class set theory to make a group of notes that are not so dissonant and construct melodies or harmonic climates that way as well. You know, I can play the guitar in a way that would make people say that it is derivative of Jimi, or Beck, or Steve Howe, etc., BUT if I throw some 0,1,3,4s in there, they will have no idea ! Haha.
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Very interesting, thank you
Haha, i laughed at the name. I wonder how busy Frank could have been if he'd been alive. Writing about all the stuff going on today. Him acting out like a typical "social media influencer". I can totally see he would do something about such topic in a funny way. I'm the type of listener Frank would probably dislike. I mainly like his Blues & Rock stuff, simple triad harmony parts, etc. Black Page part 2 is cool tho. But that's as crazy as it gets for me.
Great video! Thank you very much! Basically you need 150 musical IQ or above to understand Frank’s music! I hope you get an opportunity to interview Steve Vai at some point. He notated a lot of the music when he was with Frank but he has a lot of great stories too!
You're welcome and thanks for watching.
'Excellent explination.
Thank you.
I just love your Zappa analysis! That was by far the most understandable definition of pitch class set theory I've ever encountered...the way you described it at the most basic level, but related it to finding some form of continuity in the construction of dissonant melodies for Zappa's music, really put it all into better perspective for me as a composer as well...thank you!!!
One question though...apart from the 0,1,3,4 example where you played the two minor thirds a semi tone apart, I am left wondering more about how Frank would deal with the harmony under these dissonant melodies, i.e., would the harmonic underpinning also be based on the same pitch class as the melody, or would he simply build the foundation by ear after these "ugly" themes were composed??? As I don't have any of Frank's charts or full scores of my own to reference, I was wondering if you could shed some further light on the construction?
Thank you very much. In relation to your question about the melodic and harmonic in some of these dissonant pieces, sometimes Zappa would write what sounded good to him irrespective of it fitting into a specific design. This can be frustrating for the analyst, because you can't reduce the music to a conclusive analytical scheme, which is often the reason why it sounds interesting. The only thing you can do is look for habitual tendencies which is what I have done using the pitch class sets in the video. Zappa could be quite evasive about his approach to harmony, particularly the dissonant music. My only deduction apart from my own analyses is that he used whatever sounded right to him whether it followed any strictures or not. Best wishes.
Thanks for the detailed answer...I had a feeling it wasn't going to be some magic formula for the harmony, but at least with the pitch class sets, you have at shown us some method to his madness!!!
I stumbled across your 30yr Retrospective today. Comments are turned off so forgive me for writing here. It was a completely consuming watch, gave a lot of depth into who you are as a person and musically. Loved every minute (not finished it yet !) Please can you point me in the direction of the first piece on this video, you`re performing with a three piece live. It's a brilliant chordal/single note line....and I want to hear the full track - where can I buy it ? (it`s literally from 0.00 to 0.55) infact also the piece at 2.05 to 2.50 too.
If anyone else is reading this I URGE YOU to watch this video btw - Best Wishes
You are most kind, thank you very much.
chananhanspal.bandcamp.com/track/planet-julie-feat-lalle-larsson
chananhanspal.bandcamp.com/track/somebody-out-there
@@ChananHanspal Thankyou - I just bought both of the albums, money well spent - I will digest 👍
@@stealthy7 Thanks for the support, I appreciate it a lot. Best wishes.
Please forgive my ignorance but I think Steve Vai said that any particular cluster of notes encompassed by a beam, is to be played in the duration of one beat. Is that right? Because it makes Mr Z's and Mr V's scores more terrifying.
What's the right path to get me into zappas orchestral work??? I love yellow shark for instance but I don't know other orchestral works
Whew!
Frank Zappa's the greatest !!!!!
@Chanan Hanspal There was an interview later in Zappa's life where he claimed that 12 tone serialism was 'ugly' and incapable of producing beautiful music. Do you know the interview and would you know where I could find it?
Thanks in advance!
Thanks a lot, what can I say?... Great!)
You're welcome and thanks for watching.
[0123] in a particular order is a classic musical cryptogram for Bach (which doubles as a cross-motif): B-A-C-H. Of course these aspects probably don't enter into the meaning of Zappa's music.
I haven't watched the all video sorry, but isn't this the Slonimsky melodic pattern/thesaurus of scales?? Sounds like it is similar to me, give note a number, have an algo (e.g. skip the third, etc.), apply it to numerous octaves, and do inversion and transposition.
"The Slonimsky Thesaurus of Scales and Melodic Patterns is a reference book of scales and melodic patterns, analogous in function with phrase books and dictionaries of idiomatic expressions. It contains 1,332 scales and melodic patterns, which are logically constructed using a simple idea. The idea is that you take a pattern of a few notes and then keep transposing it by a regular interval.
The Slonimsky-Schillinger Symmetric System is a way of approaching scales based on regular divisions of one or more octaves. Schillinger used the term symmetric scale to describe a set of notes increasing by the same interval. Slonimsky extended this to more octaves and experimented with combinations of such patterns"
Rubber shirt is the only Zappa piece I find ugly
There's no accounting for taste
Well it's not really a composed piece but two parts blended together - "FZ in liner notes from Sheik Yerbouti: The bass part is extracted from a four track master of a performance from Gothenburg, Sweden in 1974 which I had Patrick O'Hearn overdub on a medium tempo guitar solo track in 4/4. The notes chosen were more or less specified during the overdub session, and so it was not completely an improvised "bass solo." A year and a half later, the bass track was peeled off the Swedish master and transferred to one track of another studio 24 track master for a slow song in 11/4. The result of this experimental re-synchronization (the same technique was used on the Zoot Allures album in Friendly Little Finger) is the piece you are listening to. All of the sensitive, interesting interplay between the bass and drums never actually happened...
O'Hearn's bass track originated as an overdub on FZ's solo from Inca Roads, Gothenburg, Sweden in 1974. FZ broadcast this version of Inca Roads with O'Heran's overdubs on WSOU FM in 1978.
Bozzio's drum track originated from a studio recording of a piece titled Number 9 which is a version of the Outside Now motif in 11/4 referenced by FZ in the Sheik Yerbouti liner notes above as ' a slow song in 11/4'."
Zappa music is absolutely horrific. It's amazing he got as far as he did.
Conceptual Continuity...
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Did you write software to do this analysis?
Spoken in Peccary like a double tag.
this is very interesting. the way you present it, I find the mathematics kind of cutely simple and obvious. unfortunately, the music itself still doesn't sound good to me. I still don't hear what about this might have sounded 'good' to Zappa himself. it all sounds rather samey, to me. do I have to totally saturate my brain with dissonant and atonal music before it all starts to sound distinct?
Thank you.
If only you were this interesting in your lectures
There’s no accounting for taste. More Ugliness please! Ty Mr Hanspal Great Stuff!
All the clever, dare I say ingenius musical motifs and devices aside, most of Frank's songs suck, let's face it.
Takes one to know one
no one needs to .. it is ugly and only hyped.. no one says it out of fear of being called ordinary
Im subbin..
16:42 just one detail that very last piece is St Alfonso pancake breakfast.. 99.9% ..is it not?