CIVILIZATION PHAZE III: THE SYNCLAVIER #2

The synclavier follower up album for "Jazz from hell" was already announced in 1987, but it would last until 1994 that it would appear as the double CD set "Civilisation Phaze III". The album did a lot to make good for Zappa's early death because of cancer in 1993. Rather than a reflexion upon his career it's a big blast into new directions, with several high quality compositions on disc one and bizarre experiments on disc two. For these experimental parts Zappa included improvisations from the three live concerts with the Ensemble Modern, that make up 30% of the music. Speaking for myself I find it impossible to hear the difference between the notes that were humanly played and the synclavier notes, because the synclavier by now could work with sampled notes from the same instruments.

The synclavier from the mid eighties onwards had achieved facilities as the possibility to enter weird irregular rhythmic groupings as applied in the "Get whitey" example from below. Between 1993 and 2000 the Ensemble Modern played several of Zappa's synclavier compositions (some note examples are included in an article by Erik Voermans in the Dutch magazine "Mens en melodie" ("People and melodies") of December 1995). "Get whitey" is included on the "Yellow Shark" CD of 1993. It's one of the more relaxing pieces of the album. This relaxing effect is formed by a strict 9/4 meter, where the underlying harmonic basis is mostly mixing the white keys of the piano. The notes of the melody are carried through the various instruments of the orchestra, like bars 1 and 2, given beneath (0:00 till 0:10 on the CD). Upon this comfortable basis solo instruments play erratic counterpoint figures in wild irregular groupings. Bars 15 and 16 are examples of playing 23 over 9 with various note durations (1:06 till 1:15). Such extreme rhythmic variation occurs more often in the later synclavier works. I don't know whether it's feasible to perform bar 16 exactly as this other than on a computer; at least the Ensemble Modern plays it a bit differently.

Get whitey, bars 1 and 2 (midi file).
Get whitey, bars 15 and 16 (midi file).

Get whitey, bars 1 and 2 (notes).
Get whitey, bars 15 and 16 (notes).

Right: FZ working on the synclavier (still from the "Ein leben wie ein extravaganza" documentary by Rudi Dolezal and Hannes Rossacher).

"Civilisation Phaze III" is problematic from the transcribing point of view. First because there are a lot of sound effects on the CD. The extend to which this is done in "N-lite" and "Dio fa" forms a new dimension in Zappa's music. The note notation system can only deal with sounds by giving each sound a staff of its own. When notes start to glide from one sound to another you would have to let this note fade out in one staff and come up in another staff. The score would become big and difficult to read. But mostly the problems stem from the fact that Zappa is here using different means for entering the music into the machine, because you can do it via typing in notes (as he mostly did in the earlier synclavier pieces) and by entering the music by playing it on a keyboard attached to the machine. Most music on "Civilisation Phaze III" was never meant for human playing, so Zappa could do whatever he felt like without looking for a performable score. "Amnerika" is an exception, because it was written for the "Yellow shark" program. During the years after Zappa's death, two employees of the Zappa Family Trust, Ali Askin and Todd Yvega tried to translate other pieces from the CD into performable score as well. They were succesfull for "Put a motor in yourself" and "A pig with wings", but attempts to convert "Xmas values" and "Buffalo voice" didn't work out well (according to the booklet accompanying the "Greggery Peccary & other persuasions" CD by the Ensemble Modern).
It's possible however to score out anything by approximation when you don't have to bother about the readability. I can't approach most of "Civilisation Phaze III" correctly, but I find ignoring the album for that reason not an option either. Below are five sections that I could write out normally more or less and one other fragment that remains only a sketch with approximate note durations lengths and without meters.
The first three examples are taken from "Put a motor in yourself". This piece has a base in E Dorian and is full of unusual harmonic movements, like parallel fourths and fifths, chromaticism and the formation of 9th and 11th chords. The first example shows the opening theme, that is played in parallel fourths and ends chromatically. In the previous version of this site the examples were shorter and more sketch like. The Ensemble Modern however had the nerve to actually play this piece and put it on record in 2003. So I got convinced that it can be performed by humans and thus it must also be possible to score it out more accurately. It takes an awful lot of energy to do this, but indeed, with the help of the version for the Ensemble, I could go back to the synclavier version. The Ensemble Modern version namely has more clues in it for transcribing it. Their rhythm section, as far as you can call it that way, is more specifically ticking 16th notes and bass drum beats indicating meters.

Put a motor in yourself, opening (midi file).

Put a motor in yourself, opening (transcription).

Between 3:36 and 4:20 there's a section played in parallel thirds, fourths, fifths and octaves. The main melody here is forming mostly 9th and 11th chords. The melody is full of syncopes, only the drum part gives some grip on a meter. The bass is doing a counterpoint movement.

Put a motor in yourself, 3:40 till 3:55 (midi file).
Put a motor in yourself, 4:05 till 4:12 (midi file).

Put a motor in yourself, sections (transcription).

With the titles of the last two pieces on disc II - "Beat the reaper" and "Waffenspiel" - Zappa is in all probability referring to his approaching death. "Waffenspiel" is German for game of arms by the way. But there is nothing of a fight going on in these compositions. They are gentle ongoing improvisations, where you can imagine Zappa lying in his sick bed listening to the sounds from outside and thinking of new music. All through "Beat the reeper" it's raining and we hear a car departing. "Waffenspiel" is a collage of sounds of things happening outside, like construction work, birds singing and an airplane flying over. Barry Miles describes Zappa's last days in his biography and as it appears Zappa died in peace surrounded by his family.
Next are two fragments from "Beat the reaper". The first is in a strict tempo, that I could transcribe. It shows on a very small scale the mixture of hocketing (leading a melody over various instruments), counterpoint and harmony, that Zappa often used in his late works. It is present in a far more complex form in pieces as "Xmas values" and "While you were out II" from "Jazz from hell". Some bars of "Xmas values" are transcribed below. It features a hocketing ensemble over which one of the atonal note strings/sequences with irregularly jumping intervals is played. "Civilisation Phaze III" is full of such sequences. See also "Igor's boogie, phase II" and the "I promise not to come in your mouth" riff for early examples of hocketing. The second "Beat the reaper" section is a sketch, taken from the emotional section half through, that has one of the sound effects in it. The melody is namely played by three instruments that are coming up shortly after each other.

Beat the reaper, 2:19 till 2:34 (midi file).
Beat the reaper, 12:43 till 12:52 (midi file).
Xmas values, 1:27 till 1:37 (midi file).

Beat the reaper, 2:19 till 2:34 (transcription).
Beat the reaper, 12:43 till 12:52 (sketch).
Xmas values, 1:27 till 1:37 (transcription).