Über Synclavier:
„Der Synclavier war Anfang der 90er Jahre schon ein Klangerzeugungsdinosaurer (das geht schnell im Bereich der Elektronik), und Zappa hat ja nur deshalb auf ihm komponiert, damit er die totale Kontrolle hinsichtlich der Performance hat (die hier praktisch nicht erfolgt). Das Klangergebnis ist größtenteils klinisch, soundmäßig veraltet und klingt wie eine Demoversion fürs Ensemble Modern (als Ergänzung zur Partitur), mitnichten aber wie ein vollgültiges Werk. Holzbläser werden zum Beispiel nachgeahmt, aber Elektroklänge à la Klarinette sind eben keine Klarinette, für nahezu alle weiteren Instrumente gilt das gleiche. Es gibt troztdem Sequenzen, an denen man in dieser Hinsicht nichts aussetzen kann. Der Synclavier hat letztendlich doch einiges möglich gemacht. Aber für mich bleibt es eine Klangvorstellung und keine mustergültige Realisierung.“
(Amazon Review zu Civilization Phase III)
Frank Zappa himself über die Entstehung von Damp Ankles:
“Damp Ankles is probably about two years old. It had been sitting around. I’ve got boxes of floppies with compositions that have been started and are in various stages of development I’ve had since I got the Synclavier. I don’t work on one thing all the way through. „Damp Ankles“ was the one I had the most trouble with because of the nature of the sounds that were in it. When it was originally typed in, we didn’t have a velocity keyboard, so I had to find a way to artificially impose dynamic information onto those sounds. I had tried replacing the original FM timbres that were used with samples and it didn’t have the same character. So I went back to the original timbres to keep the original mood of the piece and then added some samples around it for the rhythm section. But it just wouldn’t behave. I worked on that one for a long time.
The dynamics of the velocity information exist in that computer as a list of numbers of amplitude values from 0 to 100. So 100 means that’s all you get. That’s as loud as it’ll ever be. When there’s no velocity information, all the parts are at 100 percent. It’s fairly charmless, especially if you have kind of a synthesizer woodwind sound. It just grates on you after a while. C7 is the highest note on the keyboard so that’s 100 percent. C7 equals 100. C2 is not the lowest note; the lowest playable note is A0, but C2 is about the quietest dynamic you might want to use. Below that it’s very, very subtle. So you write an extra composition using only the notes between C2 and C7 and those pitches you type in in this auxiliary composition then become the dynamic code for the individual instrument that’s reading that. So you set up a situation where the computer reads this other piece of music and converts the musical data into dynamics. That’s how we did it. That’s taxing the system.“
(http://wiki.killuglyradio.com/wiki/Zappa_On_Jazz_From_Hell)
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[/SIZE][/FONT]A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.[/B]