[Guitars] oh fuck off zappa

[Campestral]

blagged apostropher tonight and he's blabbing on about it is conceptual continuaty it's not all it is it isn't the time boogy a mess but fucks sake what is he doing with the guitar? it's fucking bewildering. like he's a stand up comedian joking with every note. what a prick. music is not comedy. no wonder him and bill hicks dies of cancer fcukjing idiots

[anglarna]

Fuck you.

I heart Zappa and Apostrophe is a fantastic album.

[djbarry]

Apostrophe is one of my favourite Zappa albums...

[djtoast]

Originally Posted by Campestral

music is not comedy.

WARNING: 56k users beware

whyever not? sometimes it IS. why do people listen to music at all if not to experience some emotional response to it? partly it's a social thing, selected to mark you as being just as ALTERNATIVE as your schoolfriends, or just as POMPOUS as the other office opera bores, or just as hard-as-nails as the other street-dwelling trance-listening neds, or just as cool and sophisticated as the other people who play RnB loudly in their cars outside Trash

but that just governs what we listen to in realtion to how we fit in with society. WHY we (people in general) listen to music at all, is that it appeals to the bits of our brain connected with feelings and emotions.

so whether you're fired up cos you're getting ready to go out, moping about cos your girlfriend chucked you, in the throes of despair cos your family was wiped out by a hurricane, dancing across the sky cos you're in love barf music helps you make sense of the feelings. often the lyrics are an important part of this, but musical languages are more fundamental and direct than words.

our western musical language isn't just invention, it's based on conventions established over about 500 years; it's very sophisticated but relies on many simple real-world psycho-accoustic phenomena. the relationships between frequencies of certain notes (ie that your eardrum vibrates exacly four times as quickly if you play top E on a guitar as it does if you play bottom E; the B string makes it vibrate exactly 3 times as quickly) combined with our ability to PRODUCE sounds (singing, humming, whistling...) make tonal diatonic music an inevitable extension of the human body.

thus we get our system of harmony using assonance and dissonance largely from physics, and we come to expect certain things from that system. when we BREAK the rules of that system, it's unexpected - and that's exactly what comedy is, something unexpected and unusual happening.

and humour is prevalent throughout musical forms, using that technique of surprise, to satisfy our need for aural emotional stimulus. the italian word SCHERZO (meaning joke is adopted to describe huge volumes of music written by Bach, Beethoven, Haydn, Chopin and countless others, and it's very often the title of light hearted musical pieces.

the way this happens can be through any of the musical resources available: often ornamentaion (trills, mordants, appogiaturas etc), sudden and unexpected key changes or modulations, repetition of musical themes and material adapted by changing the key reigister, instrument (flight of the bumblebee on a tuba... ) or altering of the rhythm, rubato...

but in EXACTLY the same way as a joke with words, if you make someone think they're going to hear one thing, and then they hear other, the result is humour.

[AlcohollicA]

i'll have some of what he's smokin'.

[djtoast]

me or zappa

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Campestral

no wonder him and bill hicks dies of cancer fcukjing idiots

I believe that both Hicks and Zappa (note capitals) are dead. Get your tenses right.

Zappa is a god of the guitar. Without the sort of stuff that he started off doing, alot of current artists wouldn't be here today.

And as for music being comedy, get a clue. What do Billy Connely, Bill Baily, Wierd Al Yankovich, Bloodhound Gang etc make? Do their songs count as stand up?

Idiot.

[Charlie Parker]

fcukjing cancer?

What the fuck is that?
If Zappa were alive he'd have a good old laugh at you

[Campestral]

djtoast i think that's the most amaxing philosophy i've ever seen
i understand a bit about what you said but hear this:
why do musicians always play just scales and automated notes when they practise?
i am trying to dissolve my mind. when i practise scales i know that i am doing it but then when i want to play some for fun i find i am lost and using notes in the scale like the white lines in the road straight down the middle
i think everyone does this
we play sporadic sequences and then jump along to other sporadisisms
if we recoreded all our practise and then got in the right mood to throw them together we might realise our natural abitlyi to be composers
i like to think anyone who gets some tequnique is capable of composing a thought/idea/emotion/

[Hammer]

Originally Posted by Campestral

i am trying to dissolve my mind.

You want some high quality acid and a bit of speed for that mate

[Campestral]

acid is beauty!
speed is crap
if i was in charge of the world i would make everyone who was in a confident mood take acid
it's not a thing to do inconfidently
but in a good mood it will prevent niavity and develop wonder

[Campestral]

dj toast you're getting pulled up.
i understand what you mean about all the scherzo stuff and how comedy can be applied to any situation but i don't agree it is the same with music
a comedian can tell a joke many times but if he keeps the ears vibrating at the same speed all the time then the ears are goning to think oh wow this is boring
the only way a good comedian can get away with reapeating a joke is doing it different
so it's the same with music
i don't think beethoven or motarzt did the music scientifically to created the humour
they did it spontaniously! i know they wrote it in the house and shit but to them writing music is the same as us playing it and i bet they nevfer changed it once they wrote the comedy bits cause it would sound made up then
zappa andbill hicks would hate everyone anyway
they would hate all you cause they know you don't know and they would hate me cause they know i know they don't know
van halen is a much better guitartist than zaappa

[djtoast]

hmmm, you're right i suppose that unless a joke is REALLY good we'll tire of it quickly.

but then, remember that there are only twelve episodes of faulty towers, and it NEVER stops being funny

as for scales they're obviously to build technique, not music as such - but you CAN take highly regimented, restricted ways of doing things and make music. a fugue is a very strict form where the same melody is used throughout in tightly controlled ways. in 12-tone ( / serialist) music you take the twelve semi-tones from C to B and play them in a particular order, exactly once each, and then develop music out of the "tone row" you've created, altering it by playing the sequence forwards, backwards, upside down or upside down AND backwards - in a way that's as regimented as playing scales (both hands together / contrary motion / at an interval of a minor third...)

even within western diatonic harmony, musical possibilities are so endless, it makes little sense to criticise zappa or anyone for their approach. if he doesn't float your boat, play something YOU like BETTER!

[katana_manatee]

Just being a wee pedant here and wanted to point out that as far as I know, Bach never composed any scherzos. Scherzo was a form that appeared during the classical era, not Baroque, and was used in later periods.

So anyway, I largely agree with your er... Essay shall we say lol Humour is such a hard thing to pin down. It can be from something unexpected or from things which can only really be described as funny. It is almost impossible to describe, especially because of the subjective nature of humour.

Music is indeed a gateway to tapping into emotions and generating a feeling of something, whether it be happiness, sadness, manicness, whatever, music is there to make you feel a certain way. At least most music is apart from most Etudes and the like. I just wonder about what is the problem with humour in music, it is just another emotion. You may aswell say, why have sad music? Why does anyone want to potentially become sad? But who knows, maybe the threadstarter was being sarcastic although I doubt it. But still it is only his opinion but a rather strange one at that.

[Campestral]

humor doesn't belong in music. humor belongs in the seedy bars where is happened
good music maked you cry with emotion. good deep overwhelming feelings like love deep
humor in music is like pie in cake. they look the same but eewwww wanna spew up
i like jimi and the cure and the be all and end all
they are good music bands with true feelings. they make people cry and me too because i can do it too
you will cry soon when you hear me with emotion
don't drink buddies be cool and don't blame zappa it's not his fault he is just a learner guy