Frank Zappa

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid." - Frank Zappa

What started my interest in creating generated music? I was very influenced at the time by Frank Zappa's Jazz From Hell (JFH) released in 1986. Regrettably his last studio album. The album is not only a dramatic presentation of Zappa's compositional scoring talent, but a introduction blitz into computer music & his use of the Synclavier music system. The Synclavier tracks on JFH were composed by Frank himself & are not randomly generated, though first listen would lead you to consider a massive computer construction. FZ hand wrote most of the album's tracks 3-4 years before JFH. His written scores were directly written to the Synclavier & played through it's FM / additive synth engine. Employing the Synclavier not only as a scribe & conductor but as a single 16 track, 64 voice / 32 output synth module only. No other synth was used on this album. The whole process from written work to final performance was carried out on this single Digital Audio Workstation (DAW). Zappa's Jazz From Hell was the inspiration, getting introduced to the idea of generating music was the outcome. The rest is contained in the creative pursuit.

I did not in 1986 have a Synclavier at my disposal, nor would I have music system with those same specs for another 15 years. I would instead be programming my score on an Apple IIe, sequencing on a MAC30se & using Roland's Sound Canvas & Yamaha's FB-01 as my synth engines. Rather BIG difference when it comes to DAW power. But no matter, just as FZ transcribed his written score into his machine, I would be doing the same, but with code, & into a hell of lesser machines. Frank's Synclavier system vs my Apple II system, my programmed code vs Frank's musical genius. When constructing a code that is going to generate a musical midi composition, should I not reach for a style or an approach to playing the score? How does one even go about composing like Frank Zappa if one is not Frank Zappa? How can you even conceive a code based on the stylistic approach of Zappa?? Quite the dilemma to ponder??? The ongoing quest for new gear & pondering thoughts like this are the stuff musician's are made of. JFH is a fantastic journey into electronic music composition. Certainly not the European sound of the new wave & way more compositional than anything in the progressive genres of rock or jazz. The process initiated long nights of thinking, pondering over equations & how to use them musically, IF THEN ELSE routines, random procedures & predictive percentages all went to work in the code that I manipulated in order to humanize & create a style in my BASIC & PASCAL produced midi "text" note scores to file.

The music technology of 1988, the midi equipment and the commercial hardware you bought often had problems performing your midi sequence performances. Quite often you hit either the limitations of you PC's processor or the maximum polyphony of your synth module. No matter how much money you poured into your gear at that time, all midi performances dealt with midi issues. The way the execution of the midi sequence sounded was odd, a very sound on / sound off, music box result. The musical compositions would sound like a typewriter & move like a robot. Accessing the many properties of a midi note these days is easy, back then you were satisfied if the note played, stayed in key & ended. There were many system shortcomings that were difficult to program around. The number of voices & polyphony, always a factor. This was what running large midi compositions was like six years after midi was commercially made available in 1986. In the midi generating system that I developed, it would take numerous calculations to produce the final midi file for my Jazz From Hell like performances. It would take numerous times running the final sequence in MasterTrax to record it without midi error. Constant repetition in programming, sound design & recording to achieve a final outcome that I, eh... sort of desired? The system I developed over four years produced around 5 incomplete works & 4 completed to a point. To a point to which I gave up on an idea and just stopped calculating. Editing the song out with a long mixer fade out or abrupt ending. Jazz From Hell influenced me greatly back then & still resonates in the currant compositions that I am exploring on this journal & soundcloud.