Steve Vai has been one of the true innovators in guitar history and certainly one of J21's biggest influences. With the release of a new live DVD / CD entitled "Where the Wild Things are" Steve continues to push the boundaries of his guitar playing. So, it's a good time for J21 to conduct a little interview with Mr. Vai.

Andrew Greenaway, the mastermind behind the "Idiot Bastard website" (www.idiotbastard.com), is compiling a CD featuring 20 artists with the task of condensing Zappa's "Burnt Weeny Sandwich" album into a 3-5 minute piece.

Watch for J21's new column in Total Guitar (Spain edition). The first lesson will be published in the June edition. In this series of columns J21 will teach alternative ways to push your musicality to new limits and help you reach your goals with the guitar.

You can find an interview and one track on the cover CD of Total Guitar in Spain. It's the one with Ron "Bumblefoot" Thal on the cover.

J21: Is still good music in the vault to be released?

DO: Well yes, depending on your definition of “good” of course. The majority of what’s in the vault is audio tape never mixed or edited by Frank and so is not nearly as marketable as a tape that Frank personally approved. Current fans already trade live concert recordings and would probably snap up the same shows if they were properly released. But the most recent new releases seem to be introductory albums like “Strictly Commercial” or “Strictly Genteel”. I’d hope these are creating new Zappa fans that are discovering his music for the first time. I assume this is a good marketing strategy for keeping Frank’s music visible, even if it’s less interesting to you and me.

There must also be a huge number of outtakes, early versions and experimental tracks that Frank never pursued. Those would be fascinating. I bet anyone who ever recorded with him has some story about recording a fascinating impromptu piece that was never heard again. Making these into salable products would be a huge undertaking of time and money not to mention musical and technological scholarship. Frank didn’t intentionally make it hard for other people to recreate these things someday, but he wasn’t leaving many clues either. Once a tape was no longer of immediate use to him it got stored away. I guess we can dream about the release of imaginary projects like “The complete UMRK Sessions” on a couple hundred CDs. Or the live recordings of the entire 1988 tour. Wouldn’t that be a trip? Or how about the “Unrecorded Synclavier Tracks”? But don’t count on anything like this in our lifetimes.
An besides, didn’t Frank release enough stuff himself? I mean, may have passed on way too soon, but he personally produced enough music for three lifetimes of mere mortal composers. We should be happy there’s so much authentic Frank Zappa to listen to.


J21: “Civilization Phaze III” is a great record, but it’s hard to understand for uneducated ears. From a point of view of somebody musically trained like you what do you think are the most interesting thing in the album?

DO: I think of “CP III” as a single unified work. But I suspect Frank composed all the pieces separately and only near the end of the project did he combine them into the final sequence. He probably worked on many of them simultaneously. Eventually the whole project emerged as something greater than the sum of its parts. I also tend to think of “CP III” as a work of abstract music. Except for the few syllables “Buffalo Voice” there are no understandable lyrics or voiceovers in any of the music tracks. The sketchy scenarios in the album notes and his plans don’t help me to decipher the music. If Frank had lived longer and found the resources, I’m sure he would have come up with lots of new ideas for the staged presentation. Finally, I think the album has a very deep and profound meaning. Frank knew it would be his final big project and he had some things he needed to say – and he said them with music. To me, at least, this makes “CP III” very different from his other music. But wait. At this point I can hear you ask “David, aren’t you ignoring all the talk about pigs and pianos and whatever?”
At first, I found the narration incredibly distracting. I wondered why Frank interrupted this wonderful music with such trite talk. One close friend of mine re-recorded the entire album deleting the vocal tracks. At the time it seemed like a good idea to me too. But later I figured out, at least to my own satisfaction why the piano people are essential to the album. They are telling us not worry about understanding the music. Most of Frank’s music – most ALL music – relies on non-musical clues to help listeners figure out what it’s about. Lyrics, titles, narration, and liner and program notes focus our attention on what otherwise are just complicated patterns of vibrating air. You can write the world’s most beautiful song about the woman you love, but unless you include some lyrics or at least put her name in the title, she’ll never know whether you were thinking about her or about your car. In my opinion there are huge clues to “CP III’s” meaning contained in the talk of the piano people. Although it covers many different topics one theme strikes me over and over again when I listen: the failure to communicate. These poor guys just can’t get their points across. Most of their attempts to understand one another – especially for the new piano people are colossal failures. Of course, Frank’s editing contributed to these failures.

Besides the theme of “failing to communicate” I hear much talk about understanding music. This is mostly about the pig’s band. There are other themes throughout the narration – but I think the music talk is most relevant to the music itself. And it is the idea of greatest interest to me. I’d like to play a game. Call it REPP – “Re-Editing the Piano People”. Essentially what I’m about to do is make a new conversation using the narration in “Civilization Phaze III” as source material. I’ll use the same techniques Frank used – cut and paste.

Spider: “Like, we can’t understand what they’re saying to each other”.

John: “I know”.

Spider: “I know… it’s not trying to say something to us at all… it’s trying to say something to the pig”.

Monica: “Have you ever heard their band?”

Spider: “I don’t understand it though. Their band, I don’t understand…”

Monica: “I… I don’t think they understand it either”.

John: “What about the negative light?”

Spider: “Pigs use it for a tambourine, which is one of the reasons why their music is so hard to understand”.

Spider: “We can get our strength up by making some music”.

John: “We don’t even understand our own music”.

Spider: “It doesn’t, does it matter whether we understand it? At least it’ll give us… strength”.

John: “I know but maybe we could get into it more if we understood it”.

Spider: “We’d get more strength from it if we understood it?”

John: “Yeah”

Spider: “No, I don’t think so, because – see I think, I think our strength comes from our uncertainty. If we understood it we’d be bored with it and then we couldn’t gather any strength from it”.

John: “Like if we knew about our music one of us might talk and then that would be the end of that”.

And that really is the “end of that”. The last few lines are from track 20 on Disk 2, the final narrative on the album, just before “Beat the Reaper” and “Waffenspiel”. These are words Frank leaves us with. Afterwards comes only, presumably about guns and death. This editing game could be used to prove a lot of other things. Frank may not have intended any of them no matter how reasonable or outlandish. Only Frank could give a definitive answer of what he meant. I can just imagine him rolling his eyes he heard my analysis. Oh well, at least I’m not comparing his music to King Lear. Is it better not to know too much about our own music? Do we get more strength from making music when it is something we don’t completely understand? This is an idea that resonates very personally in me. As you see from my list of current favorite music in the following question, I listen to a lot of music that I don’t know much about. Since I gave up being a performer in 1994 I started relearning the joys of just listening. I’ve learned that to get caught up in music I need to feel a certain aura of mystery about it. If I come away baffled and amazed at how a piece was composed or performed I get more involved. Of course, if I sat down and really analyzed I could probably figure things out. But too much technical knowledge is really dangerous to music appreciation. I’ve learned the hard way that the less I know about the technical stuff the more likely I am to enjoy listening. The “hard way” of course, is to learn all the technical details only to discover later how the music has become boring. This is a trap for professional musicians who must obviously know all the details. There’s a constant danger of burning out.

Enough of this – you asked me what I hear “musically” on the album. Since I’ve given you a long talk about how dangerous understanding is, I guess it would be contradictory to pick the music apart into individual details. Instead let me talk briefly about two major areas that I would investigate in “CP III” if I were going to do a formal analysis. I’m not going to do this; let someone get a music degree for doing this. According to Frank such a study would entitle a person to wear leather patches on the arms of their sport coat (and not much else). The first thing I suggest is to chart the different sounds Frank used. Which Synclavier patches did he choose to use and when? There sure are a lot of different sounds, sampled and synthetic. The sounds come and go with lightening speed. This is generally thought of a positive feature of the Synclavier, but over 2 hours the constant variety of tone color starts to tire me out. Maybe the only reason he alternated music and talk tracks is to give our ears a chance to rest from all that synthetic sound. Frank says in the liner notes that disk one is all Synclavier sequences but disk two is a 70/30 mix of Synclavier and live recordings. The only parts of the album, which sound like live performance to me, are the sounds happening behind the new narration tracks – probably not enough to account for 30%. My theory is that bits of live recording (recorded to the Synclavier disk) were edited and mixed with the Synclavier tracks, layered within individual pieces. I can’t say definitively that this is correct because I wasn’t around during the mixdown. But if there are pieces or even sections recorded live, I can’t tell which they are. My second suggested analysis project for “CP III” would to catalog the simpler melodies and cadences on the album and compare them to Frank’s other music. The first impression one gets of “Civilization Phaze III” is greatly complex music. Frank did give us long sections of atonal and arrhythmic (or at least ametric) music on this album. It would be easy for almost anyone to use a computer composition system like the Synclavier to compose music too difficult to be performed or even too confusing to be notated. But Frank was not just anyone and the music on “CP III” is obviously his own. Hidden not too far below the surface are many little bits of “basic Zappa” – for lack of a better term. I’m not speaking of Conceptual continuity, which would be exact quotes of early material. What I’m talking are phrases, cadences and musical motives, which are essential to Frank’s style; a melody of repeated quarter notes or a simple cheesy fanfare or a blues cadence. These things remind me of similar small bits from his previous music. This quality does not seem to be found in his earlier Synclavier music. Only with this album did he master the instrument. And finally, in conclusion, let me remind you that every thing I’ve said is probably bullshit. Ninety percent of everything is bullshit. According to someone (possibly Frank himself) writing about music is like “dancing about architecture”. You can do it if you want, but probably won’t help much. If you really want to appreciate “Civilization Phaze III”, if you really want to get strength from it, just listen to it.


J21: What music do you listen to lately?

DO: Astor Piazzolla (good introductory albums: “The New York concert” or “Tango: Zero hour”) Tango, of course, is a popular music from Argentina. There’s now an entire shelf of nothing but tango in my CD collection. Piazzolla, who played a button accordion called the bandoneon, single handedly revolutionized tango and managed to create some of the most meaningful music I have ever heard. Like Frank Zappa, Piazolla was a composer best appreciated by listening to the recordings he himself made. If I had to pick a handful of the best composers of the 20th century, one of them would be Astor Piazolla.

“KARNAK” by Karnak. I purchased this album because of a radio interview I heard. The reviewer compared it to Zappa. In spite of being completely un-zappaesque, the album has grabbed my ears like nothing else. It’s a combination of Brazilian music with popular rock styles plus various location recordings. The group has another album called “Universo Umbigo” (but that seems to have gone out of print even before it was released. Anyone has any ideas how I can get a copy?)

Cuban Music / Salsa. Culturally and genetically I’m as far as you can get from Latin music but I’ve always been intrigued by it. Years ago I wrote a piece for group called the Antenna Repairmen (which was a trio of percussionists including Art Jarvinen, another Zappa copyist), one of the movements was a pastiche on a conga rhythm. Another Repairmen, Bob Fernandez decided I needed to hear some of the real stuff and he presented me with the album “Caminando” by Ruben Blades. After I devoured that I demanded he give me a list of other things to listen to.

Another Latin musician I enjoy listening to is Israel Lopez “Cachao” (“MASTER SESSIONS” album). He reminds me of Charles Mingus, a bass player who composes music for his own group and gets very hot performances. Latin singers I listen to include Albita (favorite album: “No se parece a nada”) and Gloria Estefan (at least when she sings in Spanish “Mi tierra”). It’s a good thing I don’t speak Spanish because I’m pretty sure understanding the lyrics would interfere with my fascination with the music.

Othe world music albums: “Escalay – The water wheel” by Hamza El-Di –a Nubian Oud player. This is a very simple, elegant, transcendent recording. On the other end of the spectrum, the Macedonian brass band Kocani Orkestar (album called “L’Orient est rouge”) is about as wild and out there as I can imagine. Since I mentioned Charles Mingus let me plug my favorite album: Mingu, ah, um”.

Don Byron. There aren’t many clarinetists who impress the hell out of me both because they have terrific technique and because they are extremely creative. Don Byrn is the only one actually. I’m not sure which album to recommend because thay all are very different. Byron also appears on another favorite album “Urlicht: Primal Light” in a group lead by pianist Uri Caine. If you like Gustav Mahler’s music, contemporary jazz and klezmer music (what an unlikely combination), you should know about this album. Many of Byron’s albums have a theme of some sort of earlier music. In the album “Bug music” he recreates music by Duke Ellington, John Kirby and Raymond Scott.

Raymond Scott (suggested album: “The music of Raymond Scott, Reckless nights & Turkish twilights”) Scott was a pop band leader in the 30’s who lead a quintet in his own clever, quirky tunes. He was dismissed by the critics. He went on to be a studio musician and invented some early synthesizers in the 50’s. His most famous tune, Powerhouse, is well known because it was used often in Warner Brothers cartoons soundtracks.

Spyke Jones --- The Bonzo Dog Band (my favorite Spuke: “Cocktails for two” – on Laserlight) (the entire output of Bonzos fit on 3 CDs). Spike Jones occupied a world half way between country music and classical music mixed with the sensibility of a circus ringmaster. He lead some truly amazing groups in the 40’s mostly doing parodies of current pop tunes. Their live recordings are the most engaging. The Bonzo Dog Band slices and dices the popular music of 20 years later, which deserved parody even more. From traditional jazz to blues guitar, from Elvis to the Sound of Music to Tony Bennet – all get equally well skewered. What Spike Jones and the Bonzos have in common, besides being hysterically funny, is that they kept the musical quality of their performance very high, all the while being completely off the wall.

Mike Keneally (“Hat” or “Nonkertompf”). I’ve never met Mike although we’ve corresponded a bit. I am exceptionally impressed by both these albums and by his musicianship. The two titles about as different as you can imagine. “Hat” is exuberant and in your face while “Nonkertompf” is introspective. It’s like one continuous CD-length piece.

Internet Radio. Thanks to the “Miracle of Real Audio” I can suggest radio stations to people half a world away. There are two online stations I listen to regularly. One is de Concertzender in the Netherlands (http://222.omroep.nl/concertzender/) - which, for a classical station, programs an incredibly wide variety of music. Each day of the week has a different theme.
I also like the world music channel of GoGaGa.com (http://www.gogaga.com/world). They make it easy to click through Amazon.com so you can impulse buy albums. But they play quite a variety of current releases in many different styles.
J21: Thanks a million times, David.

Years go I conducted an interview with former Zappa copyist, orchestrator, librarian, and Synclavier programmer, Mr. David Ocker. It was published in the Arf Dossier (German Zappa fanzine) in 2000 but I think it can be interesting to Zappa fans, so I've decided to post it here.

David Ocker (b.1951) worked for Frank Zappa during seven years as a copyist, but he also performed and recorded as a soloist with the London Symphony Orchestra in the premiere of Frank Zappa’s Mo’n Herb’s Vacation. He is an incredibly gifted clarinetist who has performed with the Berkely Symphony and an accomplished Composer, whose music has been performed by Xtet, the California Ear Unit, the Antenna Repairmen, and even a rock Group (the MOPE, now defunct). His chamber work Pride and Foolishness was performed on the Pacific Contemporary Music Festival in Seoul, South Korea. He now works doing something called music engraving.
He found the time to answer some questions about himself and his Zappa adventure. His answers are gems of wisdom, read and enjoy:

J21: What is Music Engraving?

DO: In the old days printing music was a difficult problem. Music notation doesn’t fit into a convenient one-dimensional string of characters the way this (or any) sentence does. Written music is two-dimensional: a musical symbol on the page changes it’s meaning depending not only the horizontal position but also on its vertical position.
What music publishers back then did was to “engrave” music on a metal plate. Just like having your name engraved into a school ring or a silver loving cup, a sharp tool gouges out the music. Eventually the other symbols – clefs, note heads, etc – were put into the metal not by scraping but by hammering. The engraver used a set of tools called punches, which came in all possible shapes to make small depressions anywhere required. Then ink is applied to the plate. The ink on the un-excavated sections is removed, leaving ink only in the depressions. Put a piece of paper over the plate, press down, and your “engraving” is transferred to the paper. If you think about this, it means the image on the metal plate had to be engraved in reverse, a mirror image. Seems like an awful lot of work but that’s how sheet music got reproduced. I understand that there are a few old plate engravers still doing it that way.
Okay, I admit this is a very simplified explanation, but my point is this: reproducing music was once done by actual engraving in metal. Before I go on, you’ll probably be interested in knowing that Frank asked me about this very same subject once. I briefly described to him how people whacked punches into sheets of metal. He had never heard of such a thing and expressed considerable amazement at the sheer low-tech violence of it. These days technology has transformed the process of reproducing music, just like it has everything else. New kinds of printers, music typewriters, press-on letters, ozalid(blueprint) and Xerox reproduction have all had their effect in the 20th century. Of course, in the last decade or so computers have taken over. The only thing that hasn’t changed is the name: it’s still called “music engraving”. Sort of like calling truck drivers “teamsters”. When Frank hired me in 1977 my initial job title was “music secretary”. Some of the work I did for him was done freehand with pens, ink, and a single ruler, using pre-printed manuscript paper. This is generally called “music copying” and it wasn’t long before I was just referred to as Frank’s copyist. There were a lot of copyists in Hollywood doing all sorts of music. But Frank really liked it when his scores were done in a style called “music calligraphy” or “autography”, which I’d learned at CalArts and which had little commercial potential because it took much longer to do. This style used drafting tools and templates to make a more uniform look, although still obviously hand-drawn. All the staff lines in Frank’s full orchestra scores were ruled by hand. The distinction between copying and engraving is generally that copying is done quickly and the finished product has a lot of inherent variability. Engraving implies some sort of mechanical production and the symbols are identical each time they appear. Also much more care is given to the layout of the music. Autography has elements of both. When I first got a computer system, I called myself a “computer music engraver” to distinguish what I did from the plate engravers who were rapidly being replaced. I imagined the “real” engravers as little old gnomes sitting in caves that looked exactly like sets for Wagner operas. In the years since, instead of working just for local composers preparing for performances, I’ve been employed by publishers who eventually print up thousands of copies of scores. I’ve even been awarded two Paul Revere Awards: prizes from the Music Publishers Association in the U.S. (Paul Revere, better known as the “one-if-by-land” American revolutionary, was also the first person in the new world to engrave music.) Of course, as in any brief description, there are lots of arcane matters which I’m omitting, conflicting attitudes and theories that I’m omitting, conflicting attitudes and theories that I’m ignoring and distinctions which I’ve glossed over. Hopefully, this little essay is enough to answer your question. I can suggest a reference work to anyone interested in the history of music reproduction. (P.S. – If you want to see my recent work look for Boosey & Hawkes publications of music by John Adams – for example the operas “Nixon in China” and “The Death of Klinghoffer” and the Violin Concerto. My name sometimes appears on the last page of music.)

J21: Steve Vai is one of my favorite guitar players, what are your memories about him?

DO: My window of personal experiences with him was extremely short, only during the length of time we were both working for Frank – but even then we had little contact. Although we worked on several of the same projects it was never at the same time or place. He did the transcriptions for the “Guitar Book” in his apartment – I remember that he lived for a while in a very boring looking building on Fairfax (a busy street) somewhere around Hollywood or Sunset boulevards – way down the hill from where Frank lived. I was there once to drop something off – I don’t think Steve was home. Meanwhile I did my work, copying and proofreading, in my own office in my little rented bungalow on the other side of Hollywood in a district called Los Feliz. Steve and I are also both on the “Sinister Footwear” recording, doubling the same Zappa guitar solo – but we never played in the studio at the same time. Steve did his overdub long before I did mine. His guitar can be heard much more distinctly than my bass clarinet.
Of course Steve’s main job was being in the band. They rehearsed long hours every day at a huge sound stage on some movie lot or other. Those rehearsals were a separate little world; my visits were infrequent and I usually just sat in the back and watched. Working at home my contact with other InterContinental Absurdities people was mostly by phone. My questions could usually be answered only by Frank himself and because of his weird schedule trying to reach Frank on the telephone was usually a problem. I saw other employees most often to pick up or deliver manuscripts. Watching a rehearsal or session was always a treat for me. (My life is still the same now in this respect).
Okay, back to Steve. My first memories of Steve, just after he joined Frank’s band, are of a friendly, eager, wide-eyed young guy who was ready for just about anything, both mentally and musically. I say “young” - but I don’t think he can be all that much younger than I am, maybe 10 years? Back then a decade seemed like a much bigger gap to me. I had already been working for Frank for several years and in my spare time had gotten a small dose of local notoriety as a composer and performer of strange music. Steve was fresh from Berklee College in Boston, which must have seemed a long way from L.A. and a real gig touring with a major rock band. It soon became clear to everyone that he was very talented. Besides his abilities as a performer, people were amazed by his transcriptions of Frank’s solos. He seemed to do this work so easily. I would have regarded the solo tracks as untranscribable. Of course, it’s much easier for a guitarist to figure out what another what another guitarist is playing. Once we started to play them we discovered how accurate they were. I played with Steve only once, He came to my house (the bungalow in Los Feliz) to rehearse “Sinister Footwear” – we played the melody together as a duet: bass clarinet and guitar. I think we’d both worked on it pretty hard by then, learning the nuances by playing along with the tape to prepare for Frank’s studio. Our duet went well. At least I don’t remember any problems now. When we finished playing, Steve must have wanted to learn something about how I copied music because I can remember sitting with him at my copy desk. At one point the discussion turned to composing music. I remember leaning over and opening the large desk drawer where I kept all the master copies of my own pieces. When I turned back to Steve the expression of surprise on his face was quite evident. He was impressed by how full it seemed. The last time I saw Steve in person was within a year or two of that. I went to the house he’d purchased in Sylmar – a tract in the dry, extra-boring northern part of the uniformly boring San Fernando Valley. This was either when he was still working for Zappa or soon after. Frank told me that Steve could afford the house because other people were living there who paid rent to help cover the mortgage. I was impressed because most of the musicians I knew then could not afford to buy a house. Steve had rented a large truck trailer, parked in the backyard, and set up a full recording studio inside.
I think Steve always made it clear that he wanted to compose not just tunes but also ensemble music. This is the reason for my only direct contact with him since then. He called me sometime in the early nineties and asked if I was available to work preparing the score and parts of his pieces scheduled to be conducted by Joel Thome. He sent his assistant (his sister) over to our house with copies of the manuscripts and I worked out an estimate of how much I would charge. He didn’t hire me – probably because my estimate was higher than others. Several years later I heard from him again and he wanted to know if I was available to finish the project – which apparently had not been completed by the person he did hire. But I couldn’t do that either, because the work had been started with a computer program I didn’t use. We exchanged a bunch of emails as I helped as I helped him find someone who could help. I don’t know all the details after that but eventually the music was played. And so ends the story of my relationship with Steve Vai – there isn’t much real information here but I’ve fleshed it out with needless details and other digressions. I hope it held your interest.

J21: All the Zappa fans think that the Synclavier is the ultimate instrument, but I think that right now with 10.000$ you can get a digital workstation that does more. What do you think about it? (note: This question was asked 9 years ago)

DO: You’re right – I do think that you could easily put a digital musical workstation together these days for about 10 grand that would put the Synclavier to shame. I’d rather have 25.000$ for a whole home studio but why quibble about a few thousand bucks. I’m talking about the functions of the Synclavier for composing and synthesis. Recording is a different issue. You could make a darn fine recording in a home studio, but it couldn’t compete against a professional studio like UMRK. The Synclavier was in fact the ultimate instrument in the early 80’s and it offered features impossible to find anywhere else at the time. But in the years since then computer technology has advanced the quality and lowered the price of individual musical components exponentially. We are now way anyone’s wildest imagination then, even Frank’s. A couple good synthesizers, a quality sampler and a computer powerful enough for direct-to-disk recording would be the necessary hardware. A good sequencer, sound editor and a notation program would be the principal software. Had New England Digital stayed in business and kept developing their product I suspect they could have stayed at the cutting edge (and managed to keep charging premium prices). The important thing, however, that you could get from a Synclavier that a current, composite system doesn’t quite give you is integration. Synclaviers were built to allow data to interchange from function to function. It also had a programming language (the one Steve DeFuria used to write programs for Frank). Of course there were a lot of exceptions to what you could do then, but the theory of one integrated musical system was a good idea. It still is. If they had continued to develop, I would hope this aspect of the product would also have been improved. I’m not aware of any current product that attempts the same integrated operation (but I don’t pay much attention to products I can’t afford). Today’s foremost medium of data interchange between musical equipment and software is (you can say that with me)… MIDI. What’s the best thing you can say about midi: it works. Can you imagine it working better? I can. Have you ever tried importing a midi file into a notation program? It’s usually gibberish. A few years ago certain companies tried to create a method of interchange for music notation, not just note numbers and velocity. The standard was called NIFF but it’s never going to happen (mostly because Coda, makers of Finale, opted out). There’s so much equipment and software today, which is supposed to be “interoperable” which is the fancy word meaning that it will all work together. These products are produced by many different companies who are more interested in staying in business and in maintaining their market share more than finding ways for everything to work together more easily. We can only hope. I think the beauty of digital systems for a composer is that you can sit at a computer terminal, look at standard notation on screen and then hear pretty much what you’ve written. Frank really excelled at this sort of composition. Anyone can do it now but then you needed a Synclavier. It took him a while to figure out his own methods. He spent countless hours sitting in front of the monochrome Synclavier screen, tweezing the smallest details over and over. I think this is the reason “Civillization Phaze III” is such a great album. There must be cool unfinished music still living on the Synclavier’s hard drive (it was called a “Winchester” not a “hard drive”, which will give you an idea of how fast things change. Winchester was the name of a company, which made early hard drives).
After I quit working for Frank there was a short period when I was still familiar enough with the Synclavier to hire myself out as an operator. I met a man who owned a Synclavier equipped studio, which he rented out when he wasn’t using it himself. If the client needed someone to help with the Synclavier I got work. The biggest project I assisted on was the score for a movie called “Echo Park”. On another session a client asked for something the Synclavier couldn’t do. A basic Synclavier sytems cost about 100.000$ (this is before sampling). This was also the amount of money it took to buy an average house in a reasonable neighbourhood on the (desirable) west side of Los Angeles. The client was disappointed at being told no and said “If you buy a house and put it on a desk, it should do everything you ask”. These days that basic 100K$ house costs more like 400.000$. Just imagine what you should be able to do NOW if you put a music system that costs as much as a house on your desk.

J21: Did you work on pieces of music for Frank on the Synclavier that are still unreleased? Do you think there’s still good stuff to be released?

DO: In the process of building UMRK, a huge storage vault was created to hold all the tapes, which Frank had collected during the years. He had pretty much everything he’d ever recorded. It has been 15 years since I’ve seen the vault so I have no idea what has become of it. I certainly hope they’ve maintained the environmental controls to preserve the tapes. When I quit my job with Frank we moved a large fireproof filing cabinet that held all the score and part masters into the vault. Maybe that cabinet is still down there. There was one large orchestra piece that I worked on that has never been performed. It’s a concert version of “Penis Dimension” and “I’m stealing the room”. Under Frank’s supervision I orchestrated this for a large symphonic orchestra in the same fashion I did “Bogus Pomp” or “Strictly Genteel”. Those versions are on the LSO albums. Along with the full orchestra there are narrators in “Penis Dimensions” doing dialogue from the movie, plus a chorus. Having it performed would be a big deal. Frank gave tapes of the previous recordings and had me notate the rhythms of the spoken parts exactly. He would not allow any flexibility for the performers in terms rhythmic performance – not even a fermata to allow the conductor the luxury of deciding how long to wait before going on. If there was a pause in the narration then Frank wanted enough in-tempo beats to allow that same amount of time to go by. The conductor was given no discretion.
The moral of this is, I guess, that Frank wanted to remain absolutely in control of the pacing of the music. Since it was intended as a concert version, I would have thought some allowance should be made in case an audience interrupts with laughter or applause. I would want a performer to have some opportunity to interpret the material in small matters of timing and inflection. I think Frank was more interested in recording than in live performance and the way he asked me to do this score definitely would facilitate it being recorded. There are also unperformed scores, which were interim versions of later pieces. I remember particularly an early version of “Sad Jane” for about 8 players. At one point in time this was finished although I don’t remember parts being copied. These versions were never documented properly. Should anyone ever get the unlikely opportunity to reconstruct these scores it might fill the need for “low budget” live performance Zappa pieces for smaller ensembles.

Part II will be posted here in a couple of days.

Ed Mann has just released a new CD of Gong music “Sing Gong 24: dimensional sound experience” and after listening to it for some days I am haunted by it’s beauty and power. So, I had the chance to ask him about the new CD, about FZ and other things. I’m sure you will enjoy the interview:

J21: When did you first started playing gongs? What attracted you to Gongs?
EM: When I was very young I liked to hit big pieces of metal and large oil drums. I saw a real gong in high school- I just liked the gong and spent a lot of time playing it. At CalArts, with the influence of John, Lou Harrison and Indonesian gamelan, the gong took on a new, broad mystical understanding for me as being the mother of original soundscape. From then on I had to have lots of gongs, I brought them to use as a section in Zappa's bands, (FZ liked it too), and then at the end of the 88 tour started facilitating gong workshops and events and got into the holistic use of Gong thru yoga and healing.

J21: Can you explain something about its origins and why its sound is perceived by humans as a spiritual source over history?
EM: One theory has it that it's origin is actually Mesepotamia, the result of copper and tin and other metals melting from the rock that was used to to make bread ovens, and settling on the floor of the ovens, forming the first gong, a plate or casting of thin, large metal object. Anything like that has to ring and resonate to some degree. The understanding from ancient times has always been the awareness of metal arriving on the planet in the form or meteorites, sent by God or the Gods (Gong.Gongs). So my feeling is that thru whatever means, gongs came to be. In Ancient China, where the gong took tremendous leaps forward, the gong was used as a signal of power for the leaders, to keep evil from the village or temple, and some for meditation, altho the meditation part relly grew in Tibet.

J21: What kind of mind state are you in when playing gongs?
EM: Usually adventurous as the experience is always that of being shown what to do by the gong (as a conduit) - and being shown where I am at. Sometimes it is effortless magic. Occasionally I just can't find my center, meaning that it is not the right time. When it is a presentation with other people around is the easiest, there is so much soft wave energy going on that I can float on top,that is the most fun.

J21: I want to tell you something incredible: My girlfriend has experienced pain in her hands for 2 months. Yesterday night we went to sleep alter listening to the Sing Gong 24 CD and today she just wake up without pain for the first time in a long time and this is really a true story. Can you tell us other healing experiences of people listening to Gongs?
EM: that is amazing! I am very glad to hear it, this is why I make these CDs. I have a friend's husband is in an acute battle with cancer right now, and both of them report that keeping this CD 24 hours, keeps them calm and grounded and feeling good. I have another friend who had many financial troubles resolve themselves within a few days of listening to this CD. I do not have any specific thoughts regarding what one might experience, it is all between the listener and the highly resonant wave energy on the CD.

J21: What other effects has Gong music over people?
EM: They feel immediately "let off the hook" - free of responsibility - drawn into contact with their inner being and free of physical annoyance as in the gong experience one feels Held by the tones from tine gong(s). Floating and meditation.

J21: I assume that the vibration of the gong can be strongly perceived by deaf people, making it easily for them to experience sound. Have you played gongs for deaf people?
EM: yes I have worked with the deaf, they feel the same efficient wave energy. That is what this gong stuff is all about - the gong delivers highly efficient wave energy (very little resistance). We like that, it feels good.

J21: What’s the best way of experience your new CD “Sing Gong 24”?
EM: playing in the background in the house or office. Or thru headphones. This particular CD I find I can listen to as a constant loop when I am doing computer work. Of course you can also create a time and space and go deep with the recording as an inner voyage, that is very healing, sometimes profound.

J21: I assume that you only use the UFIP Targo gong on the CD. Why did you chose this one and why did you only use one kind of gong.
EM: I do not know! Usually I use gong arrays. This UFIP gong just worked - the recording took place all at once, it was an experiment, I just put up the mics and started to play - about 50 minutes later I was done. For the CD I edited at each transition point to create the 8 tracks.

J21: What kind of mallets have you used in the CD?
EM: Vic Firth yarn wraps and GB2, Balter GM3 and Balter yarn wrap big bell mallets.

J21: How did you mike the Gong?
EM: Stereo array, I position them as per the room and instrument, I do not remember any more.

J21: If you could only choose one musician from all the Zappa bands as your favourite who will it be? And why?
EM: Tommy Mars because he is my old friend - and because I brought him to Frank - I already knew all the stuff about Tommy's abilities so it was so much fun to unleash it on Frank and watch his reactions.

J21: What kind of music do you think FZ would be doing right now if he was alive?
EM: incorporating Dub influences w/o a doubt. Pursuing more chamber opportunities. Then rocketing back to a hard fuckin' rock outfit for a minute, maybe organizing a percussion and sound ensemble for 1 project, breaking thru the Dyna Moe Humm barrier that I know he felt in the last tours and entering a whole new phase of great Zappa composition that we would ALL be clown away by. He would be having Fun. When I play his music I keep all of that in mind, logical evolution. I know his compositional sensibilities and signatures, it is easy to transpose that into new technologies, Dub Vibrations, so i take freedoms to move forward in the realizations of Franks music as I never had an experience with him that was Static. Everything always changed very fast, that is how I learned Frank, from Frank.

J21: Speaking of musical virtuosity, what is the musician of the Zappa bands you’ve been that has impressed you the most?
EM: Every musician that FZ brought was a virtuoso of some sort. Sometimes it is the viruosity that is not in your face that is the most virtuosic. It all comes down to musicianship. I developed a type of virtuosity that was very specific to Frank's bands, and I brought influences and sounds to Frank that he liked and used, and this was true of I think all of musicians in FZ's bands. Everyone.

J21: What are the Zappa songs you enjoy playing the most?
EM: nothing specific, I enjoyed playing the shows.

J21: Joe’s Garage is one of my favourite records, what are your memories about the recording this record? How was the composing process of these kind records with Frank.
EM: JG! inshort, started in France 1978 during a soundcheck Frank just started playing the Joe's Garage rhythm guitar part, and smiling real big, and allowing the whole band to play along, but it was unusual. It started with Guitar, Gong and Tamborine (Frank and me). Artie Barrow started a bass line but overall the groove it was more like a mystical drone. FZ just let it go and go. The tunes were tracked in the studio and perc was overdubbed. As usual, the seesion wre 80% music and 20% joking around with possibilities. The central scrutinizer came the day after I started talking about the Karmic Monitor, which is a co-invention of my friend LB Keilman and myself. Frank was developing an idea of an overseer. That was the night Warren and I recorded the Cyborg vocal middle section. We did a lot of interacting perc parts, me playing IN the reverb chamber, we used some cans and junk percussion too, we included parts of the (very new) amazing FZ composition "Mo andHerb's Vacation" etc. I did not go to the wet Tshirt nite club, but I know the vibe of going to a club with Frank so I believe that Vinny and Frank went to the wet t shirt thing and of course Vinnie is a great humorist and conceptualizor. - I could go on and on but you get the point I guess.

J21: What kind of sound design work did you do for Frank?
EM: in reverse order, all of the vocal sample that you hear throughout the 88 recordings, save for a few that FZ had on his synclavier. All of the timpani and chimesand other percussion that normally could not play the parts that we could when making sample sets. Using the Syndrums to create for texture and ambient beds in FZ guitar solos and elsewhere. Prior to Digital, it was synthesizers and of course - a huge array of percussion items. A percussionist is a sound designer. When Wagner wrote for Anvil, who got it? The percussion section. Varese with Sirens and metal etc - percussion. It is part of the way I think as a percussionist. When I joined FZ said to me "you know what is possible with your percussion sounds better than I do - so just put stuff where you think it might work" If he said nothing, he liked it. If he stopped the band and said ": never do that again" - I did. If he stopped the band and said "always do that exactly the same way every time" - I knew that I had just contributed to Frank's composition, which is what I was there to do, kind of. I have never listened to the recordings until recently, but now I hear - "that's my lick!" - forgot about that. I am glad to have given it to Frank.

J21: Can you tell us about your work for Emu Planet Earth and Old World instruments.
EM: I proposed this concept to Emu in 1996 and Tim Swartz, head of sound design, got the funding together to start in 1997. I had carte blanch, some great mics and per's a converters and a goodsounding studio and all my instruments plus a local South Indian Flute player and a friend who plays Eastern European string instruments. We created Old World Instruments, a CD sets, GBs of material. The Emu decided at the last moment that they wanted to make OWI into a sound module, so it meant reducing about 1.5 GB of material to 20 MB and then adding another 12 MB of material that is not on OWI. It came out very well, I did the looping and editing and compressing and programming, it was intense, it paid pretty well and now I like having the sound module, it is my sounds and I can take them anywhere. Not as amazing as the real thing, but man what you hear on Planet Earth is 3 big rooms full of instruments.

J21: We know you’ve played a lot of different types of music in the past. Is there any style in particular you would like to experiment with?
EM: Right now for me it is cross-cultural dub. Jamaican roots. African eath rhytms. HipHop beds which are Roots - Roots music has the same bounce the world over. If you give people the roots groove, then you can play all of the avante-garde weird shit, noise, chaos, melody, whatever you want. Experimental Music - people like it.

J21: You and I collaborated together in my Yellow Mind : Blue Mind CD, basically sending the recorded files through the Internet. Do you like this way of working and collaborating with other musicians?
EM: I do, it is great. I am now doing overdubs for a Native Indigineous band based in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.

J21: One thing I’m really interested in are your main musical influences. I know that you like Jimmy Hendrix. What kind of connection do you have with his music?
EM: SOUND - Hendrix was a amaster sound designer. He made real magic, from the heart.

J21: What’s your favourite record at the moment?
EM: I do not listen to anything.

J21: Do you like any new bands?
EM: not really but I do not know much of what is going on.

J21: I’m sure you have a lot of Amazing recorded music waiting to be heard. Do you intend to release something in the near future?
EM: I hope so! It is in progress, a vibes CD. way pout music though, nothing like vibes music that one might expect.

J21: What do you think of the Tibet conflict?
EM: It is very Sad. I think Tibetan Buddhist/Rasta, the saving of Sacred Tibet will live in the actions of all who have taken on the vibration to spread it forward. Same for true Rastafari.

Ed Mann is my favourite percussionist, so it was a dream come true having him play on my CD “Yellow Mind : Blue Mind” and it was also a big pleasure to conduct this interview with him. If you want to buy Ed’s new CD "Sing Gong 24" visit www.edmann.info and go to the store section.

Here goes the list of my 21 favourite movies of all times (in no order of appearence):

- Gattaca
- Kill Bill
- Empire Strikes Back
- 21 Grams
- The Doors
- Pi
- Blade Runner
- Million Dollar Baby
- The Fight Club
- Seven
- K-Pax
- The Big Blue
- Signs
- Man on Fire
- Pointbreak
- Big Trouble in Little China
- True Romance
- Breathless
- The Fisher King
- The aviator
- The Jacket

Runner-ups:

- 300
- The Forgotten
- La cinta de Moebius
- Intacto
- Enemy of the State
- Great Expectations
- Event Horizon
- Braveheart
- Amores Perros
- Wild at Heart
- Goodfellas
- Pulp Fiction
- The Usual Suspects
- The Last Samurai
- Videodrome
- The Shawshank Redemption
- Gladiator
- The Seven Samurai
- Larry Flint
- Amadeus