The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
Reply to Thread Bookmark Thread
Page 4 of 4 FirstFirst ... 234
Posts 76 to 92 of 92
  1. #76
    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I believe it is common courtesy to allow people to address the questions asked of them, rather than presuming to know the answers.

    why be a jerk about it?

  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #77

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I believe it is common courtesy to allow people to address the questions asked of them, rather than presuming to know the answers.
    Or not address them, apparently, for that matter.

  4. #78

    User Info Menu

    wow! just talkin' about zappa is polarizing!!!..c'mon guys, frank would be crackin' up at this...


    one of fz's greatest productions..for burt ward-robin fame - of the original batman tv series

    truly twisted



    peace out

    cheers

  5. #79

    User Info Menu

    I always thought he was one of the world's great one-chord soloists, as his love of the extended one-chord vamp showed. I've always thought playing bass in his band would be deadly boring during one of his many such solos. I myself walked out of one of his live concerts because of this.

    That said, his playing in a one-chord vamp was unbelievable, unpredictable, and unique. There was nobody like him.

    He was known to not take anything seriously but himself and didn't respond well to criticism.

    Note that I'm only talking about his guitar playing, not his composing.

    Jon

  6. #80

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by manleyman123
    why be a jerk about it?
    I was contributing to the discussion you started. But instead of being given the time to answer a question (I am in New Zealand so I was probably asleep when it was asked), someone else decides to presume the answer. And now you call me a jerk. So I am out of this discussion and I won't bother discussing anything with you again, jerk.

  7. #81

    User Info Menu

    A new book on all of Zappa's recordings just came out. It was written by Charles Ulrich and it's called "The Big Note".
    Ulrich is on one of the online Zappa forums, and I contributed a little bit of research for it, so maybe he mentioned my name in the acknowledgements section.
    It took him 15 years to write the book, and covers more than 100 recordings that Zappa had some role in. It's 800 pages, and costs $39. I tried to order it for my local library, but they said it was too expensive.
    The Big Note | Charles Ulrich | Non-Fiction | Books | New Star Books Publisher, Vancouver British Columbia Canada, Newstarbooks, catalogue

  8. #82

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Litterick
    I believe it is common courtesy to allow people to address the questions asked of them, rather than presuming to know the answers.

    Well you probably won't see this as you claimed to be leaving the discussion. I didn't mean to upset you. Did I misinterpret your intended meaning? You're certainly free to point out if I got it wrong or add you're own response.

  9. #83

    User Info Menu

    I had heard Freak Out! in the late '60s (and was dutifully "freaked out!"), but I didn't really get into Zappa until I heard Hot Rats!, I really dug Willie the Pimp. I then proceeded to get Burnt Weeny Sandwich, Weasels Ripped my Flesh, Chunga's Revenge, and The Mothers! Live at the Fillmore '71. That was the extent to which I got into Zappa, until I recently found out that Frank played a Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster on the first 3 Mothers albums; the aforementioned Freak Out!, Abasolutely Free, and We're Only in it for the Money.

    I had Freak Out! and We're Only In It for the Money on CD, so I had to get Absolutely Free to complete the collection (which I did).

    This is what Frank said about his ES-5 Switchmaster:

    Frank Zappa’s Gibson ES-5 SwitchmasterZappa acquired his first Gibson, an ES-5 Switchmaster, in the mid-’60s. A large-bodied jazz guitar may have seemed an unusual choice for Zappa, but his formative influences were more blues/jazz and R&B than was later evident. “I used to like Johnny Guitar Watson, Clarence ‘Gatemouth’ Brown, Guitar Slim (a.k.a. Eddie Jones), Matt Murphy,” he told Guitar Player magazine in 1977. Zappa was a self-taught musician, but he did learn much of his harmony and compositional skills with the aid of the renowned 1950s book, Mickey Baker’s Complete Course in Jazz Guitar. Zappa’s Gibson Switchmaster was the mainstay of his early recordings – he earned the money to buy it from writing soundtracks for the low-budget movies The World’s Greatest Sinner (1962) and Run Home Slow (1965) – and “I used it for about five years. I recorded the first three [Mothers of Invention] albums with that guitar.”Despite Zappa’s fondness for his Switchmaster, he struggled with it when he wanted to play with increasing distortion. “I used to really like that guitar,” Zappa told Downbeat. “It had a nice neck on it, but there was a real problem with uncontrollable feedback whenever I needed more amplification for larger halls. That’s common for hollow-bodies. A lot of people said, ‘Well, just stuff it with styrofoam and it won’t feedback so much,’ but I didn’t feel like doing that.”Zappa tried modifying the Switchmaster to meet his demands: extra switches were installed to fully-utilize its 3-pickup potential, but he still wanted something different. The mods were a bit ramshackle anyhow: after his father’s death, Dweezil Zappa conceded that none of the switches even worked anymore.

    “The [ES-5] hollow-body had a nice feel and I liked the tone of it,” Frank told
    Guitar Player
    in the ’70s, “but you could never use a fuzztone with it, and there was no way to tweeze it up and make it work. Remember, in those days there were no graphic equalizers or any other scientific equipment.” To make fuzz easier, Zappa retired the Switchmaster and replaced it with a Les Paul Goldtop in 1967.

    I had to get those first three Mothers albums to see what kinds of sounds Frank could get out of that guitar. Like I said before, the first album I really got into was Hot Rats!, so the first three Mothers albums are still pretty much new to me, and it is a very interesting adventure. I always loved what Frank could do with a guitar.

    Pics





















  10. #84

    User Info Menu

    Zappa was a self-taught musician, but he did learn much of his harmony and compositional skills with the aid of the renowned 1950s book, Mickey Baker’s Complete Course in Jazz Guitar.

    Not exactly. He studied harmony at a junior college while he was a senior in high school. Piston's Harmony was the text. No doubt he probably learned the basic jazz chords out of the Baker book, but he wasn't really a self-taught musician and he certainly didn't learn "much of his harmony and compositional skill" from Baker's book.


    Quote Originally Posted by The Mother of All Interviews
    Did you learn by reading out of books on counterpoint and –
    No, I never studied counterpoint. I could never understand it. I hated anything with rules, except for 12-tone, because it was so simple-minded. It was as simple-minded as the idea of getting a pen and some paper and some Higgins ink and just drawing some music. But all the rules of counterpoint and what constitutes good counterpoint, I just couldn't force myself to do that, and I could barely make it through the harmony book, because all the formulas that you learn there sound so banal. Every time one of the exercises was presented, you would hear how the chords were supposed to resolve. All I could hear was the infliction of normality on my imagination. And I kept wondering why should I pollute my mind with this shit, because if I ever got good at it, I'd be out of business.


    When Charles Ives was at Harvard studying harmony he was going crazy the way you're describing, and he wrote home to his father, saying, "This guy wants me to resolve my chords better," and his father wrote him back and said, "Tell your professor some chords just don't want to resolve."
    Well, you can tell it to a professor if you have that kind of a relationship with a professor. I mean, I really didn't have professors. The harmony training I got was because I was an unruly senior in high school, and they gave me permission to take some harmony classes at the adjoining junior college. They figured that the reason why I was such a delinquent was because my mind wasn't occupied. So they let me take this course at the junior college while I was senior. The guy who was teaching it was a guy named Mr. Russell, who was a jazz trumpet player, and I don't think that he enjoyed harmony very much either, but that's what he was teaching. I could have said to him, "Hey, some chords shouldn't resolve." And he would probably say, "Yeah, but you'll get a D if you don't resolve them."


    What book did he give you? Was it Walter Piston's Harmony?
    Yeah, it was Piston.

    Quote Originally Posted by interview
    The standard theory that I know is really quite limited because I always found it quite boring. I got a hold of the Walter Piston harmony book when I was in high school and I went through some of the exercises in there. And I was wondering why a person would really want to devote a lifetime to doing this, because after you complete it you'll sound like everybody else who used the same rules. So I learned enough of the basic stuff so I got the concept of what harmony was supposed to do, what voice leading was supposed to do, how melody was supposed to function in a harmonic climate, what rhythm was supposed to do. I learned all of that and then chucked the rest of it

    While he's playing down any influence he might have gotten from studying Piston, he at least admits that this is where his concepts of the basic building blocks of music came from.

  11. #85

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by FwLineberry
    Not exactly. He studied harmony at a junior college while he was a senior in high school. Piston's Harmony was the text. No doubt he probably learned the basic jazz chords out of the Baker book, but he wasn't really a self-taught musician and he certainly didn't learn "much of his harmony and compositional skill" from Baker's book.








    While he's playing down any influence he might have gotten from studying Piston, he at least admits that this is where his concepts of the basic building blocks of music came from.
    Interesting.

  12. #86

    User Info Menu

    I have been listening to Zappa for 40 years. Just when I think I’ve heard everything or am “over” Zappa, I listen to more stuff and get fascinated again.

    Listening to the Laether recordings today and yesterday Little Dots (live 1972 recording). Genius stuff. A lot of it fits comfortably into the jazz fusion category, and some of the arrangements are extremely complicated and well above the average Maynard Ferguson big band arrangement.

    Guitar-wise, at times he slips into fuzz tone pedantry, but at his best he is idiosyncratic and brilliant. I particularly like his more “acoustic” sounding stuff, I.e., less processed sounds.

    Anyway thanks to recordings and now streaming music days and days and days of his music are available with a simple click.

  13. #87

    User Info Menu

    My first encounter with Zappa was when I was around 10 years old walking down the road on a snowy winters day.

    A car full of teenagers went by and yelled, "Don't eat yellow snow!"

    Not until years later did I make the connection.

  14. #88

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Probably the first jazz thing I ever heard. Love at first listen
    Well who am I to quibble with the master, but Zappa mostly stays in the background here except for a succinct, dirty guitar solo.

    It's my observation that his bands are at their most creative when he gets out of the way. Moreover, his best guitar solos are the shortest ones.

  15. #89

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by Doctor Jeff
    Well who am I to quibble with the master, but Zappa mostly stays in the background here except for a succinct, dirty guitar solo.

    It's my observation that his bands are at their most creative when he gets out of the way. Moreover, his best guitar solos are the shortest ones.


    So you're saying you prefer his 20 minute guitar solos over his 40 minute guitar solos?
    .

  16. #90

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by FwLineberry
    So you're saying you prefer his 20 minute guitar solos over his 40 minute guitar solos?
    Yes, and his 10 minute solos are even better.

    Zappa is kind of like Clapton. When he goes in and makes a statement, it can be flipping awesome. It's hard to keep saying something interesting though when you're playing for 10 minutes.

    Zappa had a unique approach to soloing with a unique sound. He was very much a gearhead, and knew how to use distortion and feedback better than most, if not all, his peers.

  17. #91

    User Info Menu

    zappa was an early user of then cutting edge tech...barcus berry piezo pickups..but he didnt use it under the saddle of his acoustic...what acooustic??

    he stuck it up on the headstock of his electric guitar...probably an sg at the time...he said he liked that it picked up some of the sound of his fingers against the fretboard...


    percussive!..

    cheers

  18. #92

    User Info Menu

    Quote Originally Posted by neatomic
    zappa was an early user of then cutting edge tech...barcus berry piezo pickups..but he didnt use it under the saddle of his acoustic...what acooustic??

    he stuck it up on the headstock of his electric guitar...probably an sg at the time...he said he liked that it picked up some of the sound of his fingers against the fretboard...


    percussive!..

    cheers
    I wonder if that's how he got that funky twang on some of his songs with the Mothers--sounds acoustic, but it's rare to see him with an acoustic guitar, so I'm guessing it was one of these pickups on an SG or the Switchmaster.