Guitar Player

1968 October
Volume 2 Number 5

Zap
1 pp

1977 January
Volume 11 Number 1

Frank Zappa
A talk with rock's premiere iconoclast
Interview by Steve Rosen, 8 pp

Q: When did you start playing guitar?

FZ: I began when I was 18, but I started on drums when I was 12. I didn't hear any guitarists until I was about 15 or so, because in those days the saxophone was the instrument that was happening on record. when you heard a guitar player it was always a treat – so I went out collecting R&B guitar records. The solos were never long enough – they only gave them one chorus, and I figured the only way I was going to get to hear enough of what I wanted to hear was to get an instrument and play it myself. So I got one for a buck-fifty in an auction – an arch-top, f-hole, cracked base, unknown-brand thing, because the whole finish had been sanded off. It looked like it had been sandblasted. The strings were about, oh, a good inch off the fingerboard (laughs), and I didn't know any chords, but I started playing lines right away. Then I started figuring out chords and finally got a Mickey Baker book and learned a bunch of chords off that. (read more @ Guitar Player Interview: January 1977)

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1982 November
Volume 16 Number 11

Absolutely Frank
First Steps In Odd Meters
By Frank Zappa, 2 pp

This month, we welcome Frank as a regular columnist, presenting the first installment of a series in which he addresses specific questions regarding his creation of the Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar series. In this and subsequent columns, he will also discuss his views on music and solo techniques beyond the range of these three LPs. Transcriptions of Zappa's pieces are provided by Steve Vai, who has been one of Frank's guitarists for the past few years.

* * * *

What made you decide to do the Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar series?

There were a lot of requests from a certain group of fans that we have for an album that just had a lot of guitar solos on it. I mean, it's not that they delivered a specific order as to how it was going to be put together, but there was a demand for albums with a lot of guitar playing. Although I play maybe anywhere from five to eight extended solos during a concert, the basic style of the show that we take on the road is not guitar-spectacular oriented. There is some guitar playing, and some people really like that stuff. And so to accommodate them, I put it together. (read more)

1982 December
Volume 16 Number 12

Absolutely Frank
Putting Some Garlic In Your Playing
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

DO YOU BASE YOUR SOLOS ON linear progressions or boxy patterns?

You must understand: I don't practice, I'm not accurate, and I just play what I imagine at the time that I'm doing the solo. I mean, I listen to "Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar" now, and I can hear where I missed some of the notes going up, but you get the musical idea of what it's supposed to be. It's showing you a type of musical architecture. It's drawing you a picture. You know, it's the rise that's going up and then after that there's another part of it that comes down. It's drawing you a picture of something.

Does it bother you if you miss a note?

Well, I'm not going to commit suicide over it. I'm sure that there are perfect guitar players out there someplace, but I'll guarantee you they ain't going to play like that. I'll go out on a musical limb; I'll go out and try it. Why not? What have I got to lose? I'm not famous; I'm an unknown guitar player. Nobody's going to punch my scorecard the wrong way or give me brown stars if I screw up. Big deal. I'll take the chances. The rest of the guys that have the big reputations have to always play exactly in their style and do it right, and make sure it comes out perfect! What I do sort of sounds like the record. But usually what you get in other performances of guitar stuff on records is lacking in something. Vinnie Colaiuta has an expression; he says, "It has no garlic on it." You know, there's plenty of garlic on the Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar albums. They take chances and go out there and try things that polite society would probably rather ignore. (read more)

1983 January
Volume 17 Number 1

Non-Foods
Stepping Outside The Beat
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

LAST MONTH FRANK ADDRESSED the use of the lydian mode in solos and discussed how musical chance-taking can spice up one's playing. This month he answers more questions pertaining to solos over vamps, such as in "Heavy Duty Judy "[Shut Up'N Play Yer Guitar], and delves into the rhythmic relationships between instrumentalists in a band [Ed. Note: The name of Frank's column has been changed from "Absolutely Frank" to "Non-Foods." He thought the former title was a bit too serious.]

* * * *

"Heavy Duty Judy" sounds as if it's based on more than one tonality.

I do that all the time. For instance, that's just an E7 vamp, and I like to play in the key of A. It's just like playing in the tonality of the eleventh.

That can be pretty hairy for someone used to playing only major and minor chords and 7ths.

They're missing out! The fun doesn't start until you get to the eleventh. (read more)

1983 February
Volume 17 Number 2

(1) Frank Zappa "I'm Different"
Interview by Tom Mulhern, 15 pp

(2) Steve Vai
Zappa's "Little Italian Virtuoso"
Interview by Tom Mulhern, 14 pp

 (1) Without Frank Zappa, where would popular music be? Most likely, right where it is – or very close. That is to say, his approach to music – complex, unpredictable, and often cynical – doesn't quite fint in with the pre-programmed mainstream of pop music. Elements of all types of music, including contemporary classical, jazz, heavy metal, and practically every other recognizable form are employed with equal aplomb in Zappa's work. In the last 16 years, the 42-year-old guitaristl/composer/producer has completed 35 LPs – among them double albums – and there's a raft of material still awaiting mixdown and pressing. He has amused millions, and become legendary for the finely honed (some would say offensive) sense of humor in his songs. His fans are devout. Although other people simply don't like him, in many cases their opinions are formed solely upon the basis of what they've heard about him, rather than as a reaction to his music. (In a 1979 interview with Record Review Magazine, he said, "Most of 'em don't know what I do, but they know my name.") On one occasion, the criticism went beyond mere displeasure: While performing in London in 1971, he was pushed from a stage by an irate member of the audience, and suffered a compound leg fracture and many bruises.

(read more @ Guitar Player Magazine: February, 1983)

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1983 March
Volume 17 Number 3

Non-Foods
Bass, Sports, And Adventure
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

AS A GUITARIST and a leader, what do you expect from a bass player?

The important thing that I expect the bass player to do is to tell me what key I'm in. I'm not looking for notes faster than what I'm playing or implications of harmonic situations other than what we started out doing. I like to have a bass player with a good ear and a good sense of tempo, but the main function is to make sure that I know and that the audience knows what key we're in. And I like bass players that tell you the story by playing the roots every once in a while. A lot of these modernistic-type personages don't want to do that. They think it's beneath their dignity to play the bottom note of the chord. And that's not for me. I like somebody who tells me the key I'm in. (read more)

1983 April
Volume 17 Number 4

Non-Foods
Coming To Grips With Polyrhythms
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

ON THE SONG "GEE I LIKE Your Pants," there are some unusual tempo changes within certain bars.

There are 27 sixty-fourth-notes in the space of three quarter notes.

If you were handed a piece of music with such a grouping, how would you react?

I would say, "Hey, great!"

Wouldn't it pose a difficulty for you?

I'm sure it would. It's only a mystery hemiola, but the thing that's fascinating about it is that we end up right back on the beat. One, two, three, four, one – then it comes back on the beat of the second beat of the bar. Anybody can do that if they want to. It's just whether or not you're going to spend the time to learn how to do it. And then after you've done it, who do you impress with it? Do you play it for your girlfriend and say, "Hey, 27 over 3!" She'll say, "Big deal. Why?" When people hear it, they won't say that it sounds like 27 over 3, but they will know that it sounds different. (read more)

1983 May
Volume 17 Number 5

Non-Foods
Stretching Out With Vamps
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

THE WRITTEN MUSIC TO "Soup 'N Old Clothes" [Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar, Barking Pumpkin Records, BPR 1111] looks much scarier than the piece sounds.

Yeah. [Composer] Karlheinz Stockhausen had a word, or an expression, to describe musicians' reactions to difficult-looking music. He said that they create lazy dogmas of impossibility. It's only the young kids that will take on the challenge and do it. I mean, I've worked with a lot of older musicians from time to time, and they're totally resistant to reading anything faster than a sixteenth-note. They just don't want to know about difficult rhythms, whereas the younger kids are interested in them. This enters into many facets of our lives. For instance, a kid can sit down at a computer and just wail on it. Kids aren't hung up on the orthodoxy; they just want to go in there and make something happen with the knobs and dials. And I can't blame them. "Soup 'N Old Clothes" has a lot of sixty-fourth-notes in it. Listen to the tempo. These notes are pretty fast even at that tempo. Once again, it just goes to show how Steve Vai transcribes the stuff. (read more)

1983 July
Volume 17 Number 7

Non-Foods
Feedbacks, Effects, And Tone
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

HOW DO YOU PLAY at the brink of feedback so much without having your guitar and amp break into a nonstop howl?

At the brink of feedback? That's what I used to do; I don't anymore. I go all the way! When I first started playing, I had a hollowbody Gibson ES-5 Switchmaster. They really feed back. I always liked the sound of that guitar, but when we started working larger halls, and the feedback problem got to be bad, people said, "Stuff it with foam and it won't feed back." But I didn't want to destroy the sound of the guitar, so that's when I switched over to a solidbody instrument. Here's one good piece of advice if you're going to be playing at great volumes or using those midrange frequencies that are going to squeak like that: Don't stack your amps. Don't go for the Marshall stack/pile syndrome. It has two bad effects: One, it makes the feedback harder to control, and two, it rips your head off. (read more)

1983 November
Volume 17 Number 11

Non-Foods
Not The Moody Blues
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

WHEN WAS THE LAST time you played a guitar?

Really played it? Not just picked it up and plunked a couple of notes on it'? Not since last August.

Do you just walk by and pick it up once in a while?

Every once in a while. But I lost all my calluses, and I hardly have any facility left now.

Do you plan to give it up altogether?

Well, the only thing that might push me back into playing again is when they get that guitar interface for the Synclavier in September. I just got fed up with playing because what I do is just so useless to normal consumption. I felt that I was banging my head against the wall for no reason, so I didn't have any desire to play.

Did you try any other guitar synthesizers?

No. The only reason that I'm thinking about the Synclavier is because you can load in the music writing part of it with the guitar, not because you can get great guitar sounds or anything. It's just that ordinarily if you want to load a melody into a thing, you have to have either keyboard technique or computer typing skill in order to load alphanumerically, but they have a new guitar interface that's coming out where you can play your lines and it stores them in the computer. (read more)

1983 December
Volume 17 Number 12

Non-Foods
Digital Sampling And Guitar
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

LAST MONTH WE were discussing the guitar-related aspects of New England Digital's Synclavier digital keyboard synthesizer with a guitar interface. Can you actually feed in a guitar sound if you want to store that?

Well. in order to make a real guitar sound, you have to use the part of the synthesizer that does sampling. That's where you store a note specimen from any sound source in the real world, and then that note gets transposed up and down by the keyboard.  (read more)

1984 April
Volume 18 Number 4

Non-Foods
Video-Assisted Ignorance
By Frank Zappa, 1 p

ALL PREVIOUS "Non-Foods" columns have been prepared as question-answer items, resulting from interviews conducted by Guitar Player staff (either by phone or in person). This column, and hopefully some others in the future, will be handled as pieces of original writing, designed for the interests of GP readers.

Since I seldom touch the guitar anymore, trying to think of "guitar-oriented conversational topics" – in the strictest sense – is a bit difficult, but as the name of the column suggests, there are other matters worth commenting on for the benefit of people who play music. Our topic for today will be: Video-assisted ignorance.

Rock videos are expensive. An average cheapie costs $40,000, and on the high side they cost $300,000 (and some, I have heard, cost even more than that). Everybody wants to make one. Everybody believes they are wonderful. Everybody believes they help careers and motivate tremendous record sales. Let's look at it realistically. (read more)

1987 Januar
Volume 21 Number 1

(1) Frank Zappa On... The '80s Guitar Clone
As told to Dan Forte, 5 pp

(2) Zappa & Son
Onstage Together For The First Time
By Tom Wheeler, 4 pp

(1) WHO BETTER TO COMMENT ON the guitar's evolution in pop music than Frank Zappa? That's what we asked ourselves in late 1976, when we were preparing our 10th Anniversary issue of Guitar Player (Jan. '77). And when the question came up again for our 20th Anniversary, the answer was the same. Besides being one of rock's most prolific composers and recording artists – both as a soloist and head of the Mothers Of Invention – Zappa is one of the idiom's finest, albeit underrated, guitarists, a synthesizer pioneer, and an intelligent, biting satirist. In recent years he has concentrated on his first love, modern classical composition, and has been one of the country's most outspoken opponents to the PMRC's drive to give ratings to rock lyrics.

His essay of 10 years ago, "Good Guitar Stuffor Stereotypifications? The Evolution Of The Guitar's Use In Pop Music: Short Version," was so provocative, so priceless, so ... Zappa that we decided to rerun it in its entirety – at the end of which Frank reflects on what he wrote before, with comments about the state of guitar in the '80s. (read more)

(2) TW: How much time did you and Dweezil rehearse before performing "Sharleena" on stage?

FZ: None. It was the last concert of the 1984 tour. I'd been on the road for six mouths and had just gotten back to town. Dweezil had been rehearsing away, and since we were working at the Universal Amphitheater, I knew that he wanted to go onstage. He had played a solo on the album version, so he already knew the song. It was just a matter of him coming down to the soundcheck in the afternoon and getting his equipment set up. That was the first and only time that he and I had ever played together live.

(read more @ Zappa & Son, Guitar Player: January 1987)

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1994 March

Frank Zappa 1940-1993
An American genius in his own words.
By James Rotondi & Jas Obrecht, 6 pp

1995 October
Volume 29 Number 10

My Guitar Wants To Kill Your Mama
Inside Frank Zappa's ax artistry
By James Rotondi, 12 pp

Shut Up 'n Learn This Lesson
"Penguin In Bondage" solo and classic FZ columns,
By Mike Keneally, 6 pp

Frank Zappa's guitar solo's unravel like a good murder mystery. seemingly chaotic and elusive at any given point, they have a complex, frightening logic when taken as a whole. Zappa referred to his improvisations as "air sculpture," an instinctive process of molding the air molecules of the concert hall with the chisel edge of his artful axemanship. Like the tabla and sitar interplay in North Indian music, the dialogue between Frank and drummers like Vinnie Colaiuta, Chester Thompson, Chad Wackerman, and Terry Bozzio was polyrythmic, hypnotic, and dramatic. In long sets of tightly rehearsed material, Frank's solos were like clearings of dense thicket, an opportunity to improvise, to spit out the raw melodic ideas that he composed, edited work was built on. Through unusual rhythmic patterns, odd tonalities, searing tones, and heaps of attitude, Zappa the guitarist created a body of work that rivals his compositional legacy. In fact, the tow are inseparable.

(read more @ Guitar Player: October 1995)

2006 August
Volume 40 Number 8

All In The Family
Dweezil Zappa reinvents his playing and hits the road to celebrate his father's music
By Darrin Fox, 10 pp

Frank's Little Italian Virtuoso
Steve Vai interview by Darrin Fox, , 3 pp

The Vaultmeister
Joe Travers is not only the drummer and co-musical
By Darrin Fox, 1 p