A much needed Zappa thread.
- Thread starter Insidious Von
- Start date
Zappa never played drums yet wrote this very challenging percussion piece
"The black page" is rhythmically as well as harmonically very irregular, but it also contains elements that bring stability to it:
- The meter is 4/4 throughout,
- The same scale is used at least for the duration of one bar,
- There's a tendency to alternate speeding up and slowing down,
- In some bars the melody from former bars is repeated.
Drummer Terry Bozzio said of the piece:
He wrote it, because we had done this 40-piece orchestra gig together and he was always hearing the studio musicians in LA, that he was musing on that, talking about the fear of going into sessions some morning and being faced with "the black page". So he decided to write his "Black Page". Then he gave it to me, and I could play parts of it right away. But it wasn't a pressure thing, it just sat on my music stand and for about 15 minutes every day for 2 weeks, before we would rehearse, I would work on it. And after 2 weeks I had it together and I played it for him. And he said, "Great!", took it home, wrote the melody and the chord changes, brought it back in. And we all started playing it.
