Guess I just don't find his stance particularly interesting or original, certainly not worth a song. It's just more snobbery, with a different target, yet just as hollow and vain. In the end it's just music, and nothing actually important.ariston wrote:So you've already discovered a lot to like, which is great. Is there any "rule" out there that you have to like everything he did? In my opinion, to really "get" Zappa, you need to accept that he was primarily irreverent towards any idea of "great art" versus "bad art". He achieved a very high level of pure technical artistry, and frequently used that to embrace the mundane and the banal. I can connect with that, because I've always been turned off by the snobbery of classical "purists". Here's Zappa employing astounding compositional complexity to make a silly point, be it musical or lyrical. He's saying that music is not high art, while proving himself wrong with every note he's playing. He's saying "I'm no better than you" by being much better than you could ever be. It takes an adult mind to accept that kind of contradiction.
Additionally, you have to listen to these songs in the context of other songs. Zappa was heavily into context, contrast, and balance. Complexity is only interesting when contrasted with banality. A deluge of complex harmonies needs a simple blues riff in order to stand out. Zappa understood this better than most of his contemporaries.
Zappa - what a tight music arranger
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- KVRAF
- 5818 posts since 9 Jul, 2002 from Helsinki
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
+1 I'm with you, it is all a bit of the emperors clothes..jon wrote:Guess I just don't find his stance particularly interesting or original, certainly not worth a song. It's just more snobbery, with a different target, yet just as hollow and vain. In the end it's just music, and nothing actually important.
He got some choice tunes
But reading about Zappa's ventures like the Black page, is more than often more interesting than listening to it.
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
What stance? He didn't buy into the Artiste, he didn't feel like that was the stance to take which is like aesthetics. But I don't really know what 'his stance' means there.
I think the dot jon stance is ill-considered and tiresome and is not worth anything at all.
I wish other people wouldn't quote such empty negativity, I try not to see that shite.
This is one opportunity to talk of substance (Ariston took it, for one) and content but no
I think the dot jon stance is ill-considered and tiresome and is not worth anything at all.
I wish other people wouldn't quote such empty negativity, I try not to see that shite.
This is one opportunity to talk of substance (Ariston took it, for one) and content but no
Last edited by jancivil on Fri Nov 10, 2017 7:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
Sometimes a blank page says more than a black pagejancivil wrote:I wish other people wouldn't quote such emptiness.
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
That itself is just empty, you may find it says something but it reinforced what I said as far as I'm concerned. It comes across as straining to be pithy.
The Black Page, FZ heard some muso mention the term and wrote something for Bozzio. It's a beautiful tune but it exceeds your grasp. It's not a great title because on the page it isn't a black page. It's filled with content, melodically and rhythmically. It's fully original, it's signal Frank Zappa and no one else has or will do those things.
The Black Page, FZ heard some muso mention the term and wrote something for Bozzio. It's a beautiful tune but it exceeds your grasp. It's not a great title because on the page it isn't a black page. It's filled with content, melodically and rhythmically. It's fully original, it's signal Frank Zappa and no one else has or will do those things.
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
Not just I, but also John Cage's 4'33''jancivil wrote:That itself is just empty, you may find it says something
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
4'33" is the ultimate ambient composition because there's no music to listen to. It's meaningful in the sense that the content is strictly the ambient noise during that period of time in that space.
Back to the point about a blank page, it followed a post you liked but which said nothing of substance. It was an opinion about a stance by someone that wouldn't tend to get where the man was coming from. Meh. Sometimes less IS less.
Back to the point about a blank page, it followed a post you liked but which said nothing of substance. It was an opinion about a stance by someone that wouldn't tend to get where the man was coming from. Meh. Sometimes less IS less.
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
jancivil wrote:It's a beautiful tune but it exceeds your grasp.
The point is that a blank page is as beautiful as a black page.jancivil wrote:Back to the point about a blank page
As far as I know, you are as dull as a butterknife.
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
Oh, so you're so bruised I didn't love those remarks you have to go to that extent to insult? You're the guy who argued that science was on the same footing as religion because some precepts in it are believed. 
Your assessment of my sharpness is of no moment for me, I gotta say.)
"The point" was really apparent do you think? There was a context and I tried to sort something which was apparently opaque to me (or ask around) at the time within it. It strikes me nonetheless as straining to be pithy and it isn't. So now you're straining toward forming a platitude like it's philosophical? Big diff.
As to a conversation and where we were:
'Black Page is more interesting to read about than to hear' is a stance. It's true that the vast majority of people are more at ease with words than with music. If the piece of music doesn't interest you, it's no surprise but there are people who are very interested in the content and it stands today as something which percussionists especially find valuable, a challenge, and even a rite of passage. We are not doing a stance with that, it is interesting qua interest. 'It's another type of snobbery' is a type of snobbery, it's like the accusation 'elitist!', reverse snobbery*.
Yeah, people who understand something technical that is not commonly understood know they understand something which people who will object to that (as 'complexity for its own sake') don't. So to accuse 'snobbery' or 'condescension' for acknowledging the reality of this circumstance is *just being defensive about it. I'm sorry, it's not really fun to be engaged in discourse at this level but I don't do that kind of false humility, and I'm faced with a refusal to be humble.
Mister dot jon is the guy who went off on the people who told a guy with a website purporting to provide note names for chords to spell them correctly, as thirds, with "your retarded imaginary note names" (in a string of abuse). So the notion of him as a music critic is a joke.
I'd LOVE to talk about substance, but this is where threads go here, isn't it.
There is more than one Black Page. #1, some confusion exists here, is a drum solo. #2 tends to refer to putting the melody which mostly corresponds with the rhythms in the drum solo to a beat. 'In New York' was a disco beat. Not really but that's the... stance. 1988 was the New Age Version, not really but there's the cultural placement. And he liked that kind of thing. Is it "cute", is it "ironic" rather than the Ultra-Sincerity in normal rock 'n roll or "Genesis"? We could talk about music instead, but people like to talk in those terms. No surprise really but why can't I write about that honestly.
Here is a transcription in Musescore.
https://musescore.com/user/94766/scores/118519
It's actually tricky to play correctly because of a number of things. We're conditioned in this culture to do (2s &) 4s and you have to be real comfortable with 5s in the time of 4; at the 16th note level = 20:16 nested inside triplet half notes, 3:2 (itself tricky at this slow tempo) is, while not the most involved manifestation of his language, tricky.
Also interesting is how 4 in the time of 5 is written via ties, IE 4:5 quarters = 5 16ths. I once did all the tuplets through 19 like this in order to fully explain it and make it happen for a machine that would only accept duple divisions in 4/4.
all certainly more interesting to me than all of this verbiage which didn't really do anything, you know. Above you asserted that FZ was so uptight he couldn't exceed "four on the flour" so this content would appear to have exceeded your grasp entirely.
So what do you do, talk bollocks.
Your assessment of my sharpness is of no moment for me, I gotta say.)"The point" was really apparent do you think? There was a context and I tried to sort something which was apparently opaque to me (or ask around) at the time within it. It strikes me nonetheless as straining to be pithy and it isn't. So now you're straining toward forming a platitude like it's philosophical? Big diff.
As to a conversation and where we were:
'Black Page is more interesting to read about than to hear' is a stance. It's true that the vast majority of people are more at ease with words than with music. If the piece of music doesn't interest you, it's no surprise but there are people who are very interested in the content and it stands today as something which percussionists especially find valuable, a challenge, and even a rite of passage. We are not doing a stance with that, it is interesting qua interest. 'It's another type of snobbery' is a type of snobbery, it's like the accusation 'elitist!', reverse snobbery*.
Yeah, people who understand something technical that is not commonly understood know they understand something which people who will object to that (as 'complexity for its own sake') don't. So to accuse 'snobbery' or 'condescension' for acknowledging the reality of this circumstance is *just being defensive about it. I'm sorry, it's not really fun to be engaged in discourse at this level but I don't do that kind of false humility, and I'm faced with a refusal to be humble.
Mister dot jon is the guy who went off on the people who told a guy with a website purporting to provide note names for chords to spell them correctly, as thirds, with "your retarded imaginary note names" (in a string of abuse). So the notion of him as a music critic is a joke.
I'd LOVE to talk about substance, but this is where threads go here, isn't it.
There is more than one Black Page. #1, some confusion exists here, is a drum solo. #2 tends to refer to putting the melody which mostly corresponds with the rhythms in the drum solo to a beat. 'In New York' was a disco beat. Not really but that's the... stance.
1988 was the New Age Version, not really but there's the cultural placement. And he liked that kind of thing. Is it "cute", is it "ironic" rather than the Ultra-Sincerity in normal rock 'n roll or "Genesis"? We could talk about music instead, but people like to talk in those terms. No surprise really but why can't I write about that honestly.Here is a transcription in Musescore.
https://musescore.com/user/94766/scores/118519
It's actually tricky to play correctly because of a number of things. We're conditioned in this culture to do (2s &) 4s and you have to be real comfortable with 5s in the time of 4; at the 16th note level = 20:16 nested inside triplet half notes, 3:2 (itself tricky at this slow tempo) is, while not the most involved manifestation of his language, tricky.
Also interesting is how 4 in the time of 5 is written via ties, IE 4:5 quarters = 5 16ths. I once did all the tuplets through 19 like this in order to fully explain it and make it happen for a machine that would only accept duple divisions in 4/4.
all certainly more interesting to me than all of this verbiage which didn't really do anything, you know. Above you asserted that FZ was so uptight he couldn't exceed "four on the flour" so this content would appear to have exceeded your grasp entirely.
So what do you do, talk bollocks.
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Last edited by jancivil on Fri Nov 10, 2017 10:37 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
Being dull is hardly a very heavy insult, from my part it is an observationjancivil wrote:those remarks you have to go to that extent to insult?.
Except if you think being dull is a big issue though.
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
That's seriously desperate. Who do you think you're kidding, really.
It's an insult. If I was insecure I'd be insulted. You are desperate to project, I already addressed it. This is the absolute end of me reading your posts here. THIS is fecking dull.
It's an insult. If I was insecure I'd be insulted. You are desperate to project, I already addressed it. This is the absolute end of me reading your posts here. THIS is fecking dull.
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- KVRAF
- 2193 posts since 25 Dec, 2005
Sorry, couldn't resist
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- KVRAF
- 25852 posts since 20 Jan, 2008 from a star near where you are
Y'mean Zappa had access to indoor plumbing?t3toooo wrote:Sorry, couldn't resist
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- KVRist
- 291 posts since 3 Dec, 2002 from tokyo
Numanoid and Jan C _ you both need to lighen up. Seriously. (and yeah I love Zappa. Saw him live 5-6 times, always brilliant bands too.).
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- KVRAF
- 25053 posts since 20 Oct, 2007 from gonesville
I need to be who I am and it's better to say it than not. Yeah, that kind of exchange may be tiresome I realize. There are some people who should remain muted, cutting down on that.
