Frank Zappa - The Master Synthesizer
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Approximating Frank's mid-period Tone ('73-'78)
I read somewhere that Frank used a Coloursound Silicon Tonebender to get his 70's tone - I got one of the Macaris to confirm this - although the thought of remembering meeting Frank at the age of 6 seems wondrous to me it's cool nonetheless.
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So I built myself a replica using plain-jane 2n2222 transistors and matched 1n4148 diodes ... I easily got a great tone but not exactly what Frank had - obviously by lack of a similar preamp in my rig ... The old RAM's Head "Big-Muff" (what I originally thought Frank was using) is almost the same circuit as the Jumbo Tone-Bender ... The Big Muff has extra clipping diodes and an additional output stage - in retrospect it sounds a little less focused than the Jumbo Tonebender (IMO) ... BOTH are in the same Zappa tone-park once preceded by a graphic eq' pedal or something - that's the thing here !
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People speculate that Frank had something like an LPB1 installed in his Gibson SG replica, but the LPB-1 puts out 26db of gain - Dweezil SAYS the Zappa SG puts out 18db ... well, whatever - maybe Dweezil's not up on his logarithms or maybe it's not an LPB-1 after all &^%$# ...
Speaking of the man and his guitar, here they are together - to me this is THE guitar ... the ONE !!
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Frank's guitar was made by combining a real Gibson SG body with a custom neck - it was done by a fan named Bart Nagel (electronics added later I suspect) ... google Bart for some great photography work !
Crudely Playing "Black Napkins"
Some roughneck observations:
Except for the C7 in the outro the whole tune is in 6/8 where the band loops between some kind of C#-7 and Dmaj7 voicings and the Bass is playing lots of stacked fifths which is very characteristic of Frank's music (his sus2 chords might be related) ... in standard diatonic theory C#-7 and Dmaj7 hint/suggest a Phrygian modalism in the key of Amaj but Frank solos on what many people would refer to as a Minor Pentatonic blues based expression ... yer typical 5'th position Pentatonic blues box thing - whatever you want to call it ...
How Frank negotiates these changes says a lot ... first, he isn't making any effort to single out any of the half-tone intervals that would make C#-7 sound like the third mode of the Amaj scale - rather he treats it as a blues-pentatonic thing until it's time to resolve to Dmaj ... and only does so, it appears, in either of two way: (i) by aiming to land on the third of Dmaj7 which is F# (cadence), or (ii) by ignoring the change and plowing through on a C#min blues flury without emphasising or even necessarily mentioning F# (no cadence) ... you hear the cadenced version in the first improv fluries on the Zoot album where they solidly land (end) on F# ... you can hear this also in several of the thematic sections in the rest of the tune ... Frank carves a dramatically beautiful sound scape with economical means - the signature lick, where a few notes cover key essentials on both chords, is an obvious example of this ...
Staying in C#min helps prevent screw ups when zoning out ... if you try playing over the change to Dmaj7 and introduce A or D in your lines (shifting to B min pentatonic over Dmaj7 is one approach) you'll find it's a little tricky to get back to C#min afterwards without sounding awkward - at least it requires some preparation and is easier to screw up ... it's hard to believe but playing A or D immidiately produces an "outside" effect - maybe because the leading Blues melody is so strong and doesn't include those notes (not sure why really) ... in my mind, even though A and D are part of Dmaj7 they will still sound weird against what we're now used to hearing since the song starts ... ok, so that's ONE way of playing more outside on the changes, and it only involves slipping the pentatonic shape down two frets while retaining the pentatonic box shape ... as another experiment, try holding an A or a D throughout the tune and see if it ever sounds inside along the way - you'll probably find that on their own both notes don't seem to fit at all even though they are very inside on the Dmaj ... therefore, if you're gonna mention the notres A and D as part of Bmin pentatonic it has to be done in passing ... again, if you want to play it more like Frank does then stick to the C#min minor blues scale throughout like he does and avoid those two diatonic notes like he does ...
Part of the reason why Frank can hang on the C#min pentatonic scale first of all is because all the notes fit with Dmaj7 - that's where he's exploiting the diatonic nature of the changes ... in a way it makes things a little easier to fly over and there's less need to think about hitting the bases along the way ... the job now becomes more about letting the creative side run free within that C#min framework - so, in this sense Black Napkins can be seen as a one-scale piece ... what gives the whole thing motion and direction is this: the third degree of the C#min pentatonic scale (F#) which is usually the weakest note relative to the root (C#) now becomes the strongest note when played over the second chord in the progression Dmaj ... it seems to me he capitalises on the diatonic commonality aspect by emphasising the nat7 and, esp. the third of Dmaj7 ... I think this could be the opportunity that Frank recognized when the thing became more of a thematic piece than just another great guitar solo ...
It's like Frank smothers the whole thing in C#min blues stuff and every once in a while you might hear him land, dwell or mention the F# when the band is over Dmaj ... it seems to me like that note goes mostly un-noticed when he's doing his Coltrane-like clusters, and only until he wants to make an establishing statement he'll use the F# one way or another ... almost as if he's selectively pulling the F# out sporadically to achieving a sense of melodic ambiguity ... might sound weird to put it this way, but it's like the whole thing is revolving around how to dress up that magic note ... ok, maybe it's me !
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... my old and cheezy Zappa tabs
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Frank Going On The Beach ('03)
by Mayumi Takamatsu
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copyright jean-luc ourlin 1977 ... prints : tel# (416) 694-0922
viva Analog /// jc AT lynx DOT net