I wanted to create a thread for posting reviews and the Theory of music to create a greater appreciation of the Art of Music beyond a song merely sounding good.
A Music appreciation thread from a Music Theory point of view.
First is an Analysis of Pyramid Song by Radiohead by ixi Music
Are modern pop songs becoming more repetitive... and why that might be a good thing.
Borrowing from the areas of bioinformatics and compression algorithms, he shows that the lyrics of pop songs have become substantially more repetitive over the decades.
You will be surprised by Colin Morris's summation at the end of the video about the idea of 'anaphora'.
Are modern pop songs becoming more repetitive... and why that might be a good thing.
Borrowing from the areas of bioinformatics and compression algorithms, he shows that the lyrics of pop songs have become substantially more repetitive over the decades.
You will be surprised by Colin Morris's summation at the end of the video about the idea of 'anaphora'.
Frank Zappa's "Black Page #1" is known for being difficult to play. But is it? If so, why? Shawn Crowder decided to learn it to find out.
One of the great solo performances of the piece with the rest of the orchestra.
On guitar? Absolutely. Back in my prime, I could play about 90% of it up to speed but that last 10% never seemed to get easier. I didn’t spend a ton of time on it, so who knows. But Steve Vai sending Frank a tape of him playing it at speed and then, or so the legend says, close to twice the speed, is insane to me even now, even if the 2nd part was true or not.
I do think that with pieces like The Black Page, once you have a familiarity with that kind of melodic and technical craziness, even without having heard it, that having some of that under your belt makes it easier to approach it so it won’t seem nearly as difficult. Vai is known for his early days being 12-16 hours a day and he spent a lot of time practicing odd finger combinations that made tackling TBP possible. I doubt other guitarist even considered trying to learn it before that.
It’s a similar thing with a player like Eric Johnson. I never had any problem playing Satriani, Vai, Dream Theater, etc songs but for some reason, I just couldn’t figure out why I couldn’t play EJ’s solos in full. Just a line here and there. It had a lot to do with pick angle and escape and those concepts weren’t covered anywhere up until a few years ago on a site called Cracking The Code. It’s completely revolutionized what goes into picking and why some things are easier for some players than others. Needless to say that I could play 16ths at 240 in my heyday, but I couldn’t play EJ’s 16th notes at 160. Now I can. Mostly. Sometimes lol
It's a percussion piece... written during Terry bozio's era, not necessarily for him, but because of him and his innate abilities to pull off whatever Frank could throw at him.
You should watch the second video... it's quite spectacular. Refer to the first video for the strategic analysis.
In as far as guitars, I feel frank could easily 'spank' Steve Vai, and did so often... and if I am to be brutally honest, Frank's best six string collaboration is when he discovered Adrian Belew.
SV, is no slouch but there is a difference between technical execution and musicality.
I know all about it. I studied Frank for almost a decade and read everything I could find on him in the early days of accessible internet. I actually got to jam TBP2 with Chad Wackerman when he did a short stint at MI. I was trying to get a chance to audition for the first DZ tribute band that Dweezil was putting together but he wasn’t looking for guitarist.
Frank had a voice on guitar as strong as Hendrix so in that regard, Frank ain’t getting spanked by anyone. But SV was similar to Bozzio in his ability to take on whatever you threw at him. I’m not as into his era of FZ as I was to the earlier stuff, and yes absolutely Belew’s was much better. I’m glad SV wasn’t with him for longer. His solo career is miles beyond anything he ever did with anyone else.
But we’re talking about The Black Page. Technicality is essential.
Whoa!!! That is so freaking cool!!! I became a fan of Frank the day that he died and didn’t know until the following Monday at school. I took that as a sign.
I wish I still had some of the photocopies I made of SV’s transcriptions of FZ’s stuff. I only made copies of a few songs, Echidna’s Arf being the main one. Steve wasn’t too keen on me taking those out of his house, for obvious reasons. And he only let me copy the ones I did because they were easily accessible. I’d have killed to copy The Black Page
