Canard du jour Total Time: Guitar is once again the name of the game here. This album is pretty bare bones compared to most of Zappa's catalogue. The guitar is in your face throughout, and pretty much relentless. If you are wondering why Zappa is considered a master of the instrument this is a good place to look although there are many examples throughout his discogrophy, select ones are concentrated here.
However, there are other notable features that deserve mention. I for one am in favor of these as it helps break any monotony that is present. Though, if you not into those types of tracks they could be a little off putting. Secondly, the rest of the band, which could easily get lost in the mix, deserves some credit as well. Highlights: The title track.
A fine example of Zappa's albility to rework a song or solo. Just like the rest of the Shut Up songs, this is a guitar solo taken from Inca Roads at some point in the road. Not only is the gutiar solo interesting and dynamic, as I've said before the rhythm section is particularly top notch here.
I often find myself listening to the drum work at certain times other than the guitar solo. Stucco Homes. The guitar work here mainly features light and tasteful playing that shows off the more delicate side of Zappa's playing that perhaps isn't emphasized enough. This really comes off as a beautiful song that is quite blissful, even with some exaggerated percussion moments which is a different type of bliss IMO. Canard Du Jour. The real odd duck of the album.
This one features Zappa on bouzouki which for those wondering is a long necked balkan folk string instrument and ol' time pal Capt. Beefheart on baritone violin. The combination of these two instruments works surprising well and make this track quite a unique one in the Zappa repertoire.
It also adds some diversity into the album which is never a bad thing to my ears. Mysterious, odd, strangely attractive, and quite good are all adjectives that could be associated with this one. It might have been nice to identify specific concert dates, but you could always argue that the lack of any frame of reference forces the listener to engage with the music on its own terms.
Removed from whatever context they might have had in the framework of a particular song, the solos by themselves take on an entirely different character: approaching the rarified strata of pure, undiluted music. Three CDs of edited guitar jams might seem like too much of a good thing. But each disc is only minutes long, more or less, and the entire package could have easily fit on a pair of CDs or, with only a little more editing, on a single disc.
And after being dragged through the gutter of 'Joe's Garage', or suffering the crude sexual sarcasm and homophobic muckraking in songs like 'Jewish Princess' or 'Bobby Brown Goes Down', it's almost a relief to hear nothing but guitar heroics, played by an ace. The best thing about Frank as a guitarist is that he doesn't repeat himself much, if at all. For instance, the solos in each of the title tracks from the three original albums come from performances of "Inca Roads," yet each of them has its own personality and development.
And with all the tracks in general, the solos are clearly intended to be melodic and interesting and entertaining, never excessively drenched in feedback and never going into atonal pain mode. I refuse to go into descriptions of the solos on here, mainly because my desire to go combing through 3 CD's of guitar solos again to pry out little nuances is limited at best, but make no mistake, I like this album.
Just don't make me slog through this again, please A treat for those of us who found Zappa's novelty rock direction at the dawn of the s profoundly irritating, Shut Up 'N Play Yer Guitar is a set of guitar solos trimmed from Zappa's live concerts from the era except for Canard Du Jour, the closing track on the final album, which is a studio jam with Jean-Luc Ponty from This is the result of Frank's burgeoning interest in the technique he referred to as xenochrony - trimming improvised performances from their original context and setting them in a separate one to create a new piece.
The extracts here are, essentially, the sort of raw materials that Frank would use to create xenochronous works on albums such as Joe's Garage, but in this context, all jammed together, they work surprisingly well.
The album is significantly more varied than expected, contributions in the background from other musicians helping to avoid this becoming the Frank-and-his-guitar show, and the range of genres from classic rock to Santana tribute to fusion is impressive. Of course, the dedication Frank shows to the set's central conceit that this is a big collection of Frank shutting up and playing his guitar is also its downfall to some extent. Man cannot live on bread alone; likewise, listeners aren't often satisfied with just guitar solo after guitar solo.
If you are a big fan of technical guitar playing and want three discs of Frank riffing away like there's no tomorrow, then you'll probably love it, but for the rest of us I wouldn't say it's a set to listen to regularly, and indeed I find it hard even to sit through any of the individual portions involved , but it's still a welcome return of Frank's pioneering experimentalism which otherwise seemed to get a bit lost around this time.
Because the songs on this release aren't so much songs as they are jams, Shut Up and Play Yer Guitar is a challenging album unless one is who either A already a Zappa fan, or B are a fan of instrumental rock in general. Because it's Zappa, the songs don't have hooks, choruses, or even melodies in most cases.
These tunes are pure jams, but convey style and mood and creativity at pretty much every moment. Zappa and his varied assortment of supporting players much of whom are recorded with him live , do a great job of catching the ear with their musical interplay. The first disc is mostly noodling, and honestly gets old fairly quickly. Discs two and three build momentum, creating more cohesive sounding cuts that feel improvised, but also more like songs.
The third disc especially has tracks that show off Zappa jamming at his best in a very appealing tone. This is not the bouncy, playful Zappa we hear in the early '70's; this is electric and cool and tasty. A great purchase from the Zappa vaults, made especially more interesting because of its improvised and instrumental focus. As a fairly casual Zappa fan with only 14 of his albums in my collection meagre compared to most fans collections I am sure I particularly love his instrumentals like "Peaches En Regalia "but I have to be brutally honest honest here- I really do not rate his actual soloing.
Very good stuff. A collection of great Zappa guitar solos with an excellent band. Just listen to the first chords of Five-Five-Five to get into it! The box set compiles the most amazing material from the previous Shut up albums and makes a material that any guitar fan would like to listen to b Sample from the drum set notation from "The black page drum solo". The first of two solos with Zappa playing an acoustic guitar in the studio, accompanied by Warren Cucurullo on a 2nd acoustic guitar and Vinnie Colaiuta on drums.
The key is sometimes D Mixolydian, sometimes D Dorian. The accompanying guitar frequently uses the bass string, tuned down from E to D, as pedal note for its chords.
The meter of this solo isn't constant. There are even points where Steve Vai chose not to notate a meter division at all. Warren is picking out enlarged chords for the accompaniment, more common in jazz music than in rock. The Mixolydian F sharp and the Dorian F are both used. I haven't checked this to the full, but there appear to be writing- or printing errors in the Guitar book.
The F during bars is F natural and the F on page 57 should be an E. Perhaps the Dorian element is stronger. This solo comes from a jam session from which also "Stucco homes" was taken.
That one, and perhaps the session, has Mixolydian as starting point. Maybe the reason why Steve Vai also notates "While you were out" as in Mixolydian. The mingling of Mixolydian and Dorian is common in Zappa's music, however. While you were out, opening bars midi file. While you were out, opening bars transcription. The example above contains the opening bars with Zappa playing the sharply dissonant major seventh in bars 1 and 4.
The other bars are melodic. Warren Cucurullo plays softly in the background. At this point the solo is in D Dorian. Steve Vai transcribed this by rewinding tapes dozens of times, while I've got the facility of a computer.
A simple mouseclick is enough for going back and you've got the computer indicating durations on the time axis mathematically. I'm getting at a somewhat different rhythm, but all remains an approximation, basically sounding the same as how Vai notated this.
I'm continuing with this composition in the Jazz from hell section. Zappa used the score of "While you were out" as the starting point for a new synclavier piece, called "While you were art II". The sound of this synclavier composition is totally different and the score got thoroughly re-arranged. Still it's possible to detect the notes from "While you were out".
Here we get at a solo over a vamp. In Guitar Player, October , Zappa talked about a "harmonic climate" created by this vamp, implying D Minor and A chords: Up to the 5th pdf version of this study and in my discussion with Brett Clement I took this for Zappa interpreting the scales as D minor and A, possibly D Dorian and A Mixolydian when you take into consideration people don't always make such distinctions.
Below I've transcribed the opening of "Treacherous cretins" in detail, leading to some refinement upon this.
Semantically the above might mean chords from D minor and A, but seen the transcription it's getting more likely that Zappa had just the Dm- and A-chord by themselves in mind. In that case "implied" would be an understatement. The accompanying chords by the keyboard and rhythm guitar s are explicitely using these two chords in the example below.
For the vamping melody starting solo during bars , I'm using two staves. You can hear that these notes have their accents in the right or left channel of the stereo field and that their sound is slightly different. This only serves the midi file, but the other details are relevant for the analysis. It begins with indicating Dm and A for the accompaniment and mostly this suggests a D and A bass pedal alternation as well the bass part is never included in the Guitar book.
I never gave this much thought and a D and A bass alternation would very well have been possible, but the actual bass pedal is an A for both bars from the vamp.
In this study I'm always letting such bass pedals determine the scale, rather than the chords. Treacherous cretins, midi file. Treacherous cretins, transcription. An important topic of Brett's theory is that Lydian should be seen as the central scale. For that reason he's trying to put as much error marks behind my examples of the other scales as possible. After checking things out he has a point.
The A Dorian part in the Guitar book is happening during "Shut up 'n play yer guitar some more" on the album see below. So it could be listed at another title, but it definitely should be listed among Dorian examples. When Zappa starts soloing during "Treacherous cretins", as in bars from the example above, he's using a C with only one instance of a C natural by the accompaniment.
The other notes are always natural. When following the approach of this study, I agree with Brett that A-B-C -D-E-F-G should be seen as the primary scale not a standard diatonic scale, but a major type of scale. This appears to be due to writing or setting errors. When you listen to these bars, it's also here a C sharp.
The few genuine instances of a C natural concern altered notes. Another solo over a vamp, here in E Mixolydian. The sound of the guitar and some of its licks are remindful of the "Easy meat" solo from "Tinsel town rebellion", recorded about a week later at Santa Monica, December The vamp returns with variations and extensions as a concert opener on "The best band you've never heard before" see the corresponding section for the "Heavy duty Judy" version from It can also be heard during the second half of "Chalk pie".
See the Guitar section for a number of such bars. In Guitar Player, October , Zappa comments upon the fact that a bass pedal note or the key of a vamp doesn't prescribe a keynote for his solos: GP: "Heavy duty Judy" sounds as if it's based on more than one tonality.
FZ: 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 [extending E7 to A would create an 11th chord on E]. GP: That can be pretty hairy for someone used to playing only major and minor chords and 7ths. FZ: They are missing out! The fun doesn't start until you get at the eleventh.
GP: Further complicating the piece are the many different rhythms. FZ: Well, basically, in that tune you've got the band - bass, keyboards and rhythm guitar - playing the same shuffle rhythm, and the guitar and drums are going apeshit on top of that, but always knowing where the downbeat is going back.
That doesn't mean you have to play the downbeat, because everybody else is doing it - playing hemiolas across the bar.
A solo in D Dorian. The bass guitar is giving D as pedal note. See also my discussion of "Lucille" from the Joe's garage section of this study. Soup 'n old clothes, opening bars midi file. Soup 'n old clothes, opening bars transcription. In bar 5 Zappa accelerates to fast strings. Then it costs me an hour to transcribe a single bar, double-checking included. The whole piece takes up some bars, most of them containing figures like in bar 5.
The Trance-fusion section contains a fragment of two bars from this solo, included at the quartertones examples at "Ask dr. Zappa refers to it as "That ol' G Minor thing again" on "Guitar", where the vamp is used again. See the Guitar section for the opening of that particular execution. Depending upon the context you can notice that sometimes some people don't make a distinction between major and Mixolydian, or between minor and Dorian.
They simply call both major and minor. Sometimes Zappa does this too, as on this occasion and by calling the A Mixolydian solo from Prague simply a solo in A. On other occasions he specifically mentions a modal scale like in some of the citations above.
It gets it specific character by its rhythm both off beat and on beat and the inclusion of Bm no third add E as a passing chord. See the corresponding section for how the vamp got played at that moment. In Arthur Barrow posted some comment on the alt. He proposed to do a Santana parody, as well as the title for it. Zappa played it during a "City of tiny lights" performance and liked it enough to keep doing this. Two other such solos can be found on "Guitar" and "Trance-fusion".
So, instead of being a parody, it has become a serious tribute to Carlos Santana. The comment by Arthur Barrow on alt.
Steve on how he started the transcribing job from the Guitar Player interview, mentioned above : "And I remember the first one I did that I was on salary was "Outside now". Then I did "He used to cut the grass". And this stuff was transcribed using a cassette recorder that was so small and weak and lousy.
It was really hard. I used to sit and listen to one bar of music maybe a hundred times - hours and hours and hours of music. But it was fun: I enjoyed it. I felt useful. I was learning. I think that transcribing is one of the biggest learning experiences for a musician, and it's really good for a person. The band played five gigs between January 17th and 19th at the Odeon Hammersmith in London, doing two times an early and a late show.
This solo is a cut-out of one of the two "Inca roads" solos as explained above, played on January 18th. Gee, I like your pants, end midi file. Gee, I like your pants, end transcription. The example above is played between and It looks like Zappa has been editing the tape at this point: - In bar 5 he's playing largely only by himself in a different tempo.
If this was a composed section that would be doable, but hardly in an improvised situation. There are also many differences with the transcription by Steve Vai. Possibly Steve used an unedited tape.
One may also notice that from bar 11 onwards the durations of the C and D pedal notes aren't equal anymore. Either Arthur Barrow sought for variation or this is a consequence of editing the tape. A restless solo, played over a vamp that is alternating C sharp and E. The solo itself is chromatic, not using a specific key and using many dissonant intervals. Canarsie, opening midi file. Canarsie, till midi file. Canarsie, sections transcription. There are some mysteries surrounding this solo.
First the taped copies in the bootleg circuit apparently don't include this solo and no comparable ones from other concerts are reported. The bass overdub by Patrick O'hearn however, that replaces the original, gets confirmed in Greg Russo's book. The agenda of the Village Recorders studio in L. Denny Walley plays a vamp on electric sitar. Secondly the exact rhythm of this solo is grueling. Over this you get one of the many overdubbed comments that you can hear between the songs.
The total vamp of two bars has two figures of unequal length alternating. The drum part is quite free. In the figures there is mostly an equality between drummer, sitar and bass, so the one must have known what the other was doing. There are a few instances with the drummer ticking eighth or sixteenth notes. I still have the idea that the solo might be resynchronized to a degree. The transcription contains two fragments including the drum beats. This is the oldest solo on "Shut up 'n play yer guitar", stemming from the tour in Japan and Australia.
Here there are higher and lower as well as more irregular resonating aftersounds. This is a solo with a larger preset opening theme.
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