Jammit

[Paul Marangoni]

You guys seen this? http://jammit.com/

Marc Atkinson is involved with doing transcriptions for them. Here's his take on a Zappa tune:

[cbrady]

Being able to hear Jeff's track on Rosanna isolated from the rest of the mix is worth the price of admission alone! Thank you Jammit! Marc nailed Mo's Vacation. Way to go Marc!! Oh yeah, your transcribing is pretty good too
CB

[Rene]

Awesome. First time i see a cover of mo'n herbs vacation. I still have somewhere the original sheet music from munchkin music. Off topic, but it reminds me of this interview with steve vai. I bought it merely out of pure curiousity.

Steve Vai on Vinnie Colaiuta:
"I was just enamored with Vinnie. Back in the Frank days, his whole approach, when I heard Vinnie play, his phrasing - it satisfied something in my heart. It was easy to get certain rhythmic gratification from straight up-and-down-type players. Playing grooves, alternate grooves here and there. But Vinnie just came in and threw a wrench into the works. The guy is an alien. He was able to touch buttons with his sense of polyrhythms that no one has ever done. Frank's band was the perfect soundboard for that. I started transcribing his playing for The Frank Zappa Book. I mean, there's five to six different notations for the hi-hat!" [laughs]

"I'll tell you a really great Vinnie story. He's one of the most amazing sight-readers that ever existed on the instrument. One day we were in a Frank rehearsal, this was early '80s, and Frank brought in this piece of music called "Mo 'N Herb's Vacation." Just unbelievably complex. All the drums were written out, just like "The Black Page" except even more complex. There were these runs of like 17 over 3 and every drumhead is notated differently. And there were a whole bunch of people there, I think Bozzio was there."

"Vinnie had this piece of music on the stand to his right. To his left he had another music stand with a plate of sushi on it, okay? Now the tempo of the piece was very slow, like "The Black Page." And then the first riff came in, [mimics bizarre Zappa-esque drum rhythm patterns] with all these choking of cymbals, and hi-hat, ruffs, spinning of rototoms and all this crazy stuff. And I saw Vinnie reading this thing. Now, Vinnie has this habit of pushing his glasses up with the middle finger of his right hand. Well I saw him look at this one bar of music, it was the last bar of music on the page. He started to play it as he was turning the page with one hand, and then once the page was turned he continued playing the riff with his right hand, as he reached over with his left hand, grabbed a piece of sushi and put it in his mouth, continued the riff with his left hand and feet, pushed his glasses up, and then played the remaining part of the bar."

"It was the sickest thing I have ever seen. Frank threw his music up in the air. Bozzio turned around and walked away. I just started laughing."

Those of us who have seen or heard Vinnie Colaiuta can probably relate to the "sickest thing I've ever seen" part.

A live take with vinnie

[sjj123]

F'n wow.....awesome

[Steve Holmes]

Yeah that's some crazy impressive playing/reading from Mark.

[Jim Richman]

Awesome! I would like to know how long he spent getting this together. How old is he? That's about how long.

[Riddim]

Ow.

Bravissimo Mark.

[Avi_drums]

That is very, very interesting. Would be nice to be able to purchase the software, and isolate any song for free...

[Jim Richman]

That is very, very interesting. Would be nice to be able to purchase the software, and isolate any song for free...

There are two versions live that were done with bass and mallets. I imagine this is one of them. Although it sounds pretty clean.

[zappavin]

Hey Guys
Thanks for all the kind words. Greatly appreciated! Just a quick note to answer some questions about the Zappa song. I first heard this song in an interview with Terry Bozzio who claimed that it was the hardest song Frank had ever written for drums and that Vinnie had learned it incredibly fast and performed it with Ed Mann and Arthur Barrow. Being immediately intrigued I set out to find any recording of this performance. There is a fantastic bootleg of a show from 1979 in Poughkipsie New York where these guys pulled this off live and it blew me away. I then went and transcribed the drum, bass and mallet part as best I could and over several years I sent the transcription to other drummers to help validate all the rhythms found in the piece. I even sent one to Gavin Harrison who was incredibly encouraging. Finally I emailed Arthur Barrow a rough mix of me playing the drum part and he was kind enough to send me a photo copy of Frank's original hand written bass part which helped clarify some of the rhythms. I also finally found a great recording of Chad Wackerman playing Mo's in the studio.(In the official LSO version of Mo's Chad is playing the drum part but Frank took it out of the mix because the orchestra was so off from the accuracy of the drums. ) Soooooo
This version is my transcription morphing Vinnie and Chad together. When Vinnie played the song it was titled Mo's Vacation. Frank revised it and in 1983 changed it to Mo and Herb's Vacation which is what Chad played. Both parts are rhythmically the same. Only the voicings were changed. I layed down the drum part to a click and sent that to both Arthur and Ed. My track is all one take with no punch-ins or overdubs. Both guys turned their parts around in two days and I mixed it in pro tools and edited my video performance in Final Cut Pro. There are two transcriptions: 1 is what Vinnie played and the other is my mix of Vinnie and Chad. If anyone is interested I would be more than happy to post my transcriptions here and thanks again for checking it out.
Marc