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Xenochrony

 

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Xenochrony



 
 
Xenochrony is a studio-based musical technique developed at an unknown date, but possibly as late as the early 1960s by Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock music, jazz, electronic music, orchestral, and musique concr?te works....
. He used this technique to great effect on several albums. Xenochrony is executed by extracting a guitar solo or other musical part from its original context and placing it into a completely different song.

word derives from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 words ????? (xeno) (strange or alien) and ?????? (chrono) (time).

of the most prominent examples of xenochrony can be found on Zappa's rock opera Joe's Garage
Joe's Garage

Joe's Garage: Acts I, II & III is a 1979 rock opera by Frank Zappa. Zappa stated that along with Lumpy Gravy, this album was one of his finest achievements....
 (1979), on which the guitar solos are all xenochronous (with the exceptions of "Watermelon In Easter Hay" and "Crew Slut").

In the words of Zappa himself:

A classic "Xenochrony" piece would be "Rubber Shirt", which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album.






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Encyclopedia


Xenochrony is a studio-based musical technique developed at an unknown date, but possibly as late as the early 1960s by Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa

Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, electric guitarist, record producer, and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock music, jazz, electronic music, orchestral, and musique concr?te works....
. He used this technique to great effect on several albums. Xenochrony is executed by extracting a guitar solo or other musical part from its original context and placing it into a completely different song.

Etymology

The word derives from the Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 words ????? (xeno) (strange or alien) and ?????? (chrono) (time).

Examples

One of the most prominent examples of xenochrony can be found on Zappa's rock opera Joe's Garage
Joe's Garage

Joe's Garage: Acts I, II & III is a 1979 rock opera by Frank Zappa. Zappa stated that along with Lumpy Gravy, this album was one of his finest achievements....
 (1979), on which the guitar solos are all xenochronous (with the exceptions of "Watermelon In Easter Hay" and "Crew Slut").

In the words of Zappa himself:

A classic "Xenochrony" piece would be "Rubber Shirt", which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album. It takes a drum set part that was added to a song at one tempo. The drummer was instructed to play along with this one particular thing in a certain time signature, eleven-four, and that drum set part was extracted like a little piece of DNA from that master tape and put over here into this little cubicle. And then the bass part, which was designed to play along with another song at another speed, another rate in another time signature, four-four, that was removed from that master tape and put over here, and then the two were sandwiched together. And so the musical result is the result of two musicians, who were never in the same room at the same time, playing at two different rates in two different moods for two different purposes, when blended together, yielding a third result which is musical and synchronizes in a strange way. That's Xenochrony. And I've done that on a number of tracks.


See also

  • Polyrhythm
    Polyrhythm

    Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms. Polyrhythms can be distinguished from irrational rhythms, which can occur within the context of a single Part ; polyrhythms require at least two rhythms to be played concurrently, one of which is typically an irrational rhythm....


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