Just want to say how much I enjoyed this and how wonderful it is that talented people are starting to gain more insight into FZ the composer. Really great. Thanks
Thanks for these comparisons. Zappa sometimes wore his influences on his sleeve. “The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue” made me appreciate Zappa and learn about Eric Dolphy. “ Who is Eric Dolphy? I asked. And Zappa introduced us.
@@BarfBorfBarf music opens up differently to different listeners. If you have an academic background certain sounds will be obvious to you, I don’t think borrowing a riff is plagiarism. It’s a quote. It’s an acknowledgement, it’s a salute across the ages.
@@BarfBorfBarf Frank Zappa copied someone ? just these 5 songs arent even the same exact sound I suppose he means the drum beat in that roland kirk song has a similiar sound to Frank Zappas king kong song
@@jasonmillion5970 who knows? Many of the kids who showed up to Halloween shows wouldn't give a crap. I think Zappa positioned himself midway between the gas station (you'll wind up working in a) and the conservatory.
I am very, very, VERY happy that I "stumbled" across your channel! I like to think I'm a fairly skilled listener, and I will admit to having been a fairly "hack" guitarist and bass player. But I actually am able to follow along with you and understand what you're saying and how it applies to music notation (which I spent years faking being able to "read" in various choral situations, but in truth I do not). Thank you for your work. "Ladies and Gentlemen, this is it: THE STUDEBAKER HOCH DANCING LESSON & COSMIC PRAYER FOR GUIDANCE featuring Aynsley Dunbar. Hit it!"
IMO, it doesn't appear that Frank ever ripped anyone off in fact, he did send ups, or even memorials, to people he respected. There was one song that was named after Eric dolphy on the "Weasels ripped My flesh" album so, I think he had great respect for all musicians, as evidenced by the wide variety of those he employed whether country, jazz, r&b, rock, classical or any of a number of different genres. There's a video you can pull up of him inviting people to his house, not long before he died, who were anyting but mainstream. He loved the vocal group The Persuasions (who performed at his memorial) as well as many others I can't remember and certainly don't even know about.
Two of my fav's MO and FZ. These greats always challenged the listener and rewarded same! Oh and my 1st concert ever at 15 was during Birds of Fire and MO opened for ELP for the Brain Salad Surgery tour. My 15 year head exploded that night and I left brains all over the seat where I sat in awe! F me Billy Cobham.......love Spectrum!
I think that any time Frank heard music that impressed him, he had to immediately take it apart and figure out everything about it, then make his own version of it. Case in point: The Munsters TV theme and Theme from Lumpy Gravy.
I recently heard Zappa's "Any Kind of Pain" from "Broadway the Hard Way." It had been a minute. Anyway, I swear the chorus melody reminds me of some hit song, maybe a yacht rock type song from the 70's? It's possible I just remember it from the instrumental bit in the middle of "Purple Lagoon" from the "Live in New York" deluxe box set, but that seams unlikely. Any ideas?
Frank was so amazingly prolific, I suppose some of it was always going to sound a bit like others’ work. I love a lot of his stuff, especially the more classical style, ostinato based material. I never thought his guitar solos added up to much, in comparison.
Lovely work. I find this kind of study, beginning with a more abstract question than 'what is technically happening in this piece, to hold a more special kind of value than analysis for its own sake. Our ponderings, so to speak, are invaluable as others can learn from them not how to think but how to dream
some have said he was jealous of McLaughlin...he respected John..but that came from an interview with McLaughlin where the journalist took the second comment about John playing like a machine gun and John responded''maybe he is jealous''..That become Zappa was jealous of John's playing...Zappa never put the yards in to be a great guitarist and had too many balls in the air to just concentrate on improving his guitar technique.
A lot of zappa was him using others styles and taking it into his own compositional realms. Just patterns of data to him to made into something that worked. Takes a while for that process to become your own style.
The bebop tango is a melodic riddle that quite literally will send you into the music of the tango and its theory. Those notes that George Duke plays while singing ( This is beeeee--booooop ) are not in the slightest bit random. You can hear it all over Piazolla's music as well. It is the sound of love and death and is mind-blowing when you start going down that rabbit hole.
Have you considered releasing these videos in a podcast format? Was listening on my way to work, and it was very nice even without the visuals. Great videos. Thank you
Really good stuff! Thanks for putting this out. I'm not sure there's really any kind of dig at John McLaughlin in the featured FZ comment. John is not singled out as a vapid speed merchant who plays robotically and I suspect he did surprise Zappa quite a bit in 72 or 73. Splicing and overdubbing (and the assembling of parts) is certainly a big chunk of Zappa's M.O. as a composer. The invention of something completely new is rare even for people who can legitimately be seen as geniuses.
Interesting! I noticed the similarity between G-Spot, and the Ligeti Bagatelle ten years ago when I bought the Clear or Cloudy box. And I've been thinking about an artist's voice emerging from a synthesis of influences while listening to tenor saxophonist, Joe Lovano. I hear Coltrane, Joe Henderson, Dewey Redman, and Archie Shepp but at the same time the sound is unmistakably Joe Lovano.
excellent analysis, chanan… another example (i think) is the main riff of “chunga’s revenge” and how much it sounds like the end of stravinsky’s “ebony concerto”…
This video felt good but a little thin. It would be interesting if you explored how even into the 80s Zappa claims his guitar solos are primarily derived from Guitar Slim, Johnny Guitar Watson, and Clarence Gatemouth Brown. Maybe that could be your next video? Sourcing Zappa's influence from 50s-60s R&B even when it seems contradictory on the surface?
JM was very intense when he played it was not just dexterity. Blistering intensity. FZ liked that. G spot has that intensity. I saw both bands at Knebworth. Sublime.
I like those odd moments in Zappa like in St Alphanso's Pancake Breakfast House where Zappa cues "and the fur trapper strictly from commercial" which cues odd musical non-sequitur.
i guess FZ must've looked up to these artists you've mentioned. I feel like it helped me get exposed to this music almost by osmosis . I had been aware of these names but except for Mahavishnu I avoided listening. thanks to your comparisons I will pay attention
And of course let’s not forget when Frank specifically mocked certain fast guitarists for comedic purposes on Tinseltown Rebellion. I haven’t heard the album for many years now, but if I remember correctly at one point in a track he directs Warren Cucurullo to mimic Alvin Lee, then Al Di Meola, etc, and the irony was they all effectively sounded the same 😳😊
The opening 'prelude' to TLHIUTLI always puts me in mind of Berg's Piano Sonata Op.1. It's not the same, but is very much in the same wheelhouse - an homage perhaps, or maybe an excercise in style? It's beautiful in any case. Another great video, thank you
Dear Sir, thank you for your analytical work! I really appreciate seeing the influences between composers and I am doubly rewarded here, because I am passionate about zappa's music. Concerning Ligeti, I am convinced that the connection with Zappa does not stop at the allegro grazioso…. As a guitarist, you must also be interested in Zappa's musical influences on his guitar playing. I heard a (French) radio program talking about the influence of the Hungarian bagpipes on the solo of Inca roads (on one size fits All) amazing isn't it? did you know that? Best regards !
I didn't really notice any similarities to orher people's songs when first going through his discography, with the only exception being Wild Love, which sounded like a finnish song that I can't recall the name of at the moment.
Call Any Vegetable, Plastic People have direct Stravinsky quotes to name two. Only he knows how many pages of music he lifted by twisting the ends off into something else. Plagiarism is common throughout all types of music.
Great video! And since everybody is mentioning their own Zappa similarities with other artists.. I've always thought Zappa's new brown clouds theme sounds a bit like Debussy's "Le matin d'un jour de fete".
I saw an interview with Stravinsky where he said he loved Mozart and he loved him so much he stole from him and it was said enthusiastically as a perfectly normal justification
Zappa's Pound For A Brown also reminds me of at piece from Ligeti's Six Bagatelles too Also as any Zappa scholar will know, Dolphy's "Out to Lunch" is mentioned in the lyrics to "Oh No"
AS with most Zappa's percussionists, Ruth Underwood was beyond incredible. And her description of Billy Cobham ...well of course. I saw Frank 4x and saw Cobham 4x.. how much better can you get with either...unless we start discussing Charlie Parker, Buddy Rich.. John Coltrane, Elvin Jones
Chanan if the world were a more intelligent place, you would have one million subscribers. Some of your videos remind me of the little lectures Bernstein used to give on PBS I believe about how some music is constructed. Lastly, what music software is it that you have on your computer screen? I am becoming interested in that sort of thing.
Thanks for this. I guess it would be good to have a few more subscribers, but I'm not interested in that so much. It seems to me, the more subscribers, the more you have to water down your content and I'm not sure I'd like that. I suppose I do this because I'm interested in certain types of music and would like to share my findings with those who might also be interested. By the way, I loved those PBS lectures, Bernstein was so articulate and enthusiastic and had a great ability to present complicated information in a palatable way. The music notation software I use is Sibelius. Best wishes Albert.
Some times he would insert passages of Stravinsky or varesian aspects..He takes a lot of Webern ideas....He also like the power of Cobham and wanted that for his band.
I don't think Zappa was criticizing McLaughlin in that interview. He may have been simply stating what he likes from a guitar player, and if he was referring to McLaughlin he could have meant McLaughlin plays what he likes and does surprise him. Great video. Very interesting
Creating new music does benefit from playing around with notes and chords either on keyboards or guitar. Zappa started out on drums probably in school marching bands and a lot of that is in his music. Johnny Guitar Watson was also one of his favourites as was a multitude of influences from the world of classical and Jazz. The vast majority of fast guitar playing noodlers are really boring few ever come out with anything original just the usual blizzard of fuzz enriched noise. The exception being Steve Vai. Then of course Zappa had a great sense of humour which often found its way into his music.
This Fembot In A Wet T-Shirt passage ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-_Qd77uYU64g.html sounds like a twisted, Bernard Herrmann's Psycho motif. And even the more "conventional rest of the track has Herrmann vibes.
As a Zappa fan I found his orchestral works to be quite dull. I think his compositions worked best with the limitations of the various musicians he worked with throughout his musical career. That is where his skill as a band leader and as a composer really shone.
Any educated musician would know that Frank often copied other composers, sometimes to the point where you couldn't tell the difference between Zappa and whoever he was emulating. But this is not terribly uncommon among composers. The thing is many less educated musicians would not realize that Zappa wasn't always entirely original. Still, Zappa remains perhaps my own greatest influence, so yeah, I appreciate Frank. www.RU-vid.com/neilslade
Zappa was a jealous guy, he couldn't stand musicians that were better than him. He wanted to show the world that he was a world renowned composer but his compositions are ludic and amusing which did not sit well within classical composers circle. As far as I am concerned, I love his music but since his untimely passing, it is easy to see that the guy ran after a sort of recognition that elude him because he wasn't as great at composing as he thought he was. To me Frank is the ultimate Muffin Man.
I saw the Mahavishnu Orchestra in 1973. Shortly after I saw Zappa with, for me, probably his best band ever. I personally heard no comparison. Zappa's band, in my opinion, were far more skilled overall and had humour and warmth in their playing which I found MO lacked. MO were brilliant but did not, I believe, have the musical vocabulary of Zappa. A band who sounded more Zappaesque in my opinion were the Dutch band Focus. I saw them the year before and I could hear Zappa in some of their extended jams which they played skilfully and with great invention. (As they became more famous they moved away from this freewheeling approach).
I remember watching John McLaughlin on the Tonight Show with the Tonight Show Band. You could see they weren't impressed. Look on his early LP "My Goals Beyond" McLaughlin tried to play Pork Pie Hat by Mingus. The folks who hold that up as something special aren't Jazz musicians. Because after playing that Brilliant head by Charles Mingus he then just solos over one chord. Give me a break. Because for most of his career he never developed his abilty to play over complex challenging chord progressions like Goodbye Pork Pie Hat. And the Tonight show band knew that. They'd have respected Pat Matheny or Pat Martino or Ralph Towner, or Jim Hall or Joe Pass or even Alan Holdsworth. And yes Frank Zappa because even though He wasn't a great guitarist he was a great musical mind. And George Duke and Ruth in Zappas band wow they were something. This comment gets buried oh well.
@@paxwallace8324 - Hahahahaha, sounds like you're delusional. I've been a Zappa fan for almost 50 years. Frank NEVER SAID he was a bad guitar player!! I just remembeed a great Frank quote to an interviewer who asked why ha takes long solos. Frank said. "I like to play. I've been practiing for many years and I'm pretty good at it." That's Frank being modest. Give me eviidence here Frank said he was a bad player.
@@Frunobulax74 well he ain't negotiating any complex modulations with chromatically altered Harmonies mixed in . He's not improvising any long compelling melodic arcs over said changes that begin and end unrestrained by the song form. Now those elements are occasionally present in his compositions but like most of the fusion guitarists of the 70s he's sitting on a static platform when he solos. His compositions are so much more interesting and entertaining to me than his passable shut up and play yer guitar solos.
@@paxwallace8324 - Once again, subjective opinion, not objective fact. Frank stated many times that he had his musicians play simple and even static during his solos because that gave him more freedom with his improvised solos and helped him create his aiir sculptures. Other bands with their perfectly practiced solos aren't really even solos and are boring.. You should learn more about WHY he did his music the way he did before assuming he wasn't a a talented guitarist.
Cool video! I haven't listened to that much ligeti so i haven't noticed those ones. He also has quoted Holst's planets. I think it was on invocation and dance of a young pumpkin. If I remember correctly theres a few stravinsky licks on Absolutely free as well. Can't remember which tracks, though.
That's a great video, Chanan, "novel" observations that are voiced with gentle humour (no "academic" stridency). It reminds me that when I first bought Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch - knowing nothing about jazz, I was only guided there by references on Weasels - I found I already knew the music because of my Zappa listening (had the same experience with Varese, felt so comfortable in his clipclops). So I come at all this without your analytic precision/musical education, but I do know what you're talking about. I'd love it if you'd occasionally listen to my radio shows, where I try and make similar arguments - about the connections between Zappa's music and a wider music world - in DJ rather than composer mode. Here's my latest - there's a Zappa track as usual - though I'm not sure if RU-vid welcomes pointers to other platforms: . Anyway, cheers, brilliant work!
Thank you Ben, most kind. I have listened to your shows on occasion, and although the link herein didn't work I managed to find your September 2022 show on the Internet Archive. I really enjoyed listening to the show and could not help smiling when you mentioned fellow Welshman, Harry Secombe. Best wishes to you sir!
