Re: zappa!(was Re: For G-bashers)

[Greg Kucharo <telecaster@mac.com>]

Doctor, sir, you are appallingly well connected!


1:07 PM Richard Zvonar

>At 7:12 AM -0700 4/29/02, Evan Meyers wrote:
>
>>does anyone know specifically if zappa ever really experimented with 
>looping
>
>I asked Bob Rice, who was Zappa's Synclavier assistant for several 
>years. Bob sez:
>
>>yes, actually. During the sound checks for his live shows, he used to 
>send
>>everyone away and he'd just work with his guitar rig for a while at
>>extremely high volume levels, mostly just improvising stuff. He'd load
>>snippets into a pair of MXR digital delays with extended memory of up 
>to, I
>>think, almost 4 seconds! Anyway, on the MXRs, he' d usually create 2
>>different loops so if they played together they'd eventually drop out of
>>sync. This was the only use for the delays in the rig and they'd have 2
>>dedicated combo amps that were mic'd so that he could kick them in in the
>>middle of a solo and then play over the top of them with his main rig. 
>The
>>drummer and bass player would have to find a groove based on or around 
>the
>>loops and if both were on and they went out of sync, they would listen 
>for
>>the polyrhythms that would result from the kaos. For a short amount of 
>loop
>>time, there were pretty amazing possibilities for improvisation with good
>>players aboard.
>>
>>There is a live album called Make a Jazz Noise Here that has 2 pieces 
>that
>>use quite a bit of looping. One is called Fire and Chains which uses a
>>massive sample patch I built for him on the Synclavier with lots of vocal
>>samples from the Senate hearings on Porn Rock lyrics (and warning labels 
>on
>>records ect.), that loop around at various rates and have pitch 
>modulation
>>patched to the polyphonic aftertouch on the keyboard. You'd hold down a
>>chord and use varying degrees of aftertouch on each note to change the
>>speed of the samples going round and round. Again these mutant 
>polyrhythms
>>would result and you could play off of them if you could feel them.
>>
>>The guitar loops with the MXR delays happened at least once everynight 
>and
>>an example of that is on the cut (also on Jazz Noise) called Star Wars
>>Won't Work. There's also a pretty good helping of these delay solos on 
>the
>>"Guitar" album (2 cds of Zappa guitar solos! NOt a desert island disc but
>>interesting in small doses).
>
>-- 
>
>______________________________________________________________
>Richard Zvonar, PhD
>(818) 788-2202
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