The unique guitars, amplifiers, effect units, keyboards and studio equipment of Frank Zappa
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Touring can make synths crazy!
*** ZG: (Outlining the scope of the Zappa’s Gear book) … and also some of the keyboards and synthesizers that are of particular interest … things like the E-mu TM:
And
certainly the Electrocomp! ZG:
… and I
was just going to say; the Electrocomp. TM:
Because
Frank had never heard of that until my audition. ZG:
… and
then he got three of them for the band.
Almost
everyone played an Electrocomp. TM:
Well not
everyone… ZG:
…
certainly you and Peter Wolf had one at one
point TM:
Right.
And other cats you know they used it just
orchestrationally, as with Peter too, it wasn’t
his main axe he was really a mini-moog player,
whereas I was coming from that side of it, the
E-mu / Electrocomp kind of side. But Arthur
(Barrow) had to use it occasionally, Bob
Harris I think had to use it, but he (FZ) didn’t
just have the (Electrocomp) 101 of
course he used the Synkey and the Polybox as an
interface. ZG:
I saw
Arthur’s got a photo of your Electrocomp on his
site … TM:
That’s my
Polybox, the Synkey was lost unfortunately but
the Polybox remains ZG:
What was
the Synkey? TM:
The
Synkey, I was the only one that played it in the
interface, but the thing is if you ever notice a
picture of the band in that period, over my
mixer you’ll see a keyboard that I never play,
in other words it was used just as the interface
as the Polybox, I would play it very
infrequently, you could almost count on one hand
the times that I actually used the keyboard part
of it. However when you’re listening to a stack
of the Electrocomp playing sort of a French horn
sound, and the Polybox playing chords that
followed that by pitch with the same envelope,
then you’ll hear a very very high little piccolo
sound on the top of the whole stack, that’s the
Synkey. That’s basically what its dedicated job
was, to play piccolo parts. And it would play parallel,
it was just like a Polybox that had a keyboard,
in other words, it was its own little synth but
it could also play chords.
The
chords that you played weren’t like the Polybox
which has a one octave keyboard and you can just
voice chords, this actually had numerical
buttons, like Minor 2nd, Major 2nd,
Minor 3rd, Major 3rd . It
went up all twelve tones so you could construct
chords, but obviously it was harder to change
chords because they were little punch buttons
rather than the keys on the Polybox, and of
course it was its own synthesizer, it actually
was a little monophonic synth. ZG:
I think
the Electrocomp gear is fascinating, because
it’s not very well known TM:
Well it’s
just amazing, when I did my audition and Frank
said “You brought some gear with you?” I brought
my Rhodes, and I brought my Electrocomp, and my
Taurus bass pedals, and he said “what’s this?”
and I undid it and I played something,
and of course my signature sound was a
French horn kind of brass sound that it did, it
was my kind of signature, and his jaw dropped .
I don’t think he’d had ever heard a synth kind
of do that kind of sound in that kind of
expression that it was able to have. And I said “this E-mu you
that you have?”, and he was just like so proud
of his E-mu, this is so funny man!),
and the
only sound that he had on it , which is the
easiest sound in the world to make, was a little
pipe organ sound, an eight foot and a four foot,
no
envelope,
no nothing,
I said “you mean with all this that’s all
you got?”(laughs), and he says “Yeah?” and I
said “Well I don’t think you noticed that the
Electrocomp is very similar, I could set this
sound up exactly for you on the E-mu, and then
you’d have five voices, you’d have complete
polyphony”. And in those days that was like, you
know, going to the emerald city, like follow the
yellow brick road!”.
ZG:
Yeah I
know… TM:
Frank got
so excited he says “OK, do that” and he
tentatively hired me that day at his house, he
said I want you to come back in a week, I’m
going to give you this music and I just want you
to play it for me and then pretty much, you’d be
in the band. So when I came back the second week
the cats from E-mu were there, and I showed them
what I had done and Frank says “hard wire it”,
so they did. So even if you messed with the
knobs (except for the tuning,
those
knobs, they had to be free) but the rest of it,
the envelopes, were pre-set; they were tied up
in the back. ZG: Were
the guys from E-mu the head guys, Dave Rossum
and Scott Wedge? (E-mu marketing manager Marco Alpert later told me that it was himself,
Rossum and Wedge at that meeting.) TM:
You know
it’s been so long I don’t remember their names,
but I just remember there were three guys there
from E-mu the next time I came to Frank’s house,
and they took care of it you know, and when we
got to the first rehearsal it was set up exactly
the way I wanted it, the VCA and the VCF were
tied parallel like the Electrocomp was, and I
tweaked it a little bit, and um. It didn’t have
one feature that, I don’t know if this is
getting too detailed for you? ZG:
No, no! TM:
The only
difference with the E-mu and the Electrocomp
was, on the Electrocomp there is a filter
setting, it’s a pitch following filter that
fattens the sound up, and the E-mu did not have
that capability. In other words if you played
like two notes together it would give you a kind
of a little bit of
a warm distortion, and then it would go
away,
it’s a particular colour, like a
embouchure on a brass instrument. So the E-mu
was a little bit cleaner sounding, and a little
lacking in personality than the Electrocomp,
however the marriage was just so beautiful with
the both of them, and the evidence of that is
when you hear a lot of the stuff on ‘Sheik
Yerbouti’ which I was playing tons of parts in
parallel with them. ZG:
What
would be a stand out example track – 'Yo Mama'? TM:
That
is the
standout track for me. It doesn’t get better
than that, he (FZ) just let me have full rein
there, “Go do your deal Tommy!” But you know is
‘Fine Girl’ on 'Sheik Yerbouti'?
('Tinsel
Town Rebellion' in fact)
That “pah
pah parump”, and also the tons of brass stuff on
‘Bobby Brown’, anything like that is me playing
the E-mu. But
Frank (because it was easier and more
efficient), would let me play the tracks
simultaneously on the Electrocomp and the E-mu,
so it would be parallel. Rather than doing one
E-mu part and one Electrocomp part I would do
two parts in one take. ZG:
Right TM: Of
course they were still multi-tracked but instead
of just using one hand to do it I would use both
hands to get both parts, or actually six or
seven parts. ZG:
Did you
ever record anything just with the Electrocomp,
as a solo instrument? TM:
Well, if
you watch Baby Snakes there’s parts in the movie
where Frank is conducting sound effects…
I don’t know, he’s used those little
library titbits all over the repertoire, and
whenever you hear them, it’s usually the
Electrocomp doing that, not so much the E-mu.
But one thing that was so great about the E-mu
was the sequencer. It only had, I forget how
many note memory… ZG:
Around
200 I believe… TM:
I think
it was between 200 and 300 that rings a bell to
me. So I could set up really interesting vamps
on it, and I can remember jamming on the chord
changes to Purple Lagoon occasionally with
Frank. And it was so great because you couldn’t
do that, no instrument could really do what that
did in 1977, even though it was only five voice
and it ran out after a couple of hundred notes,
which isn’t much when you’re trying to construct
a sequence of some value. I used to be able to
trigger the sequencer on a pulse width wave, in
other words it wouldn’t be a regular sequence it
would come in and out whenever the part of the
wave was being sampled. And I used to do it during
the show and it was just, it sounded very like
avant-garde, it still had the same basic pulse,
but it wouldn’t be there all the time, it wasn’t
omnipresent, so it was kind of eclectic and
exciting, it was almost like the E-mu would lead
the jam, like you don’t really know when it’s
going to come in but you better be ready for it! ZG:
That
reminds me of the story you told about when it
started playing by itself one morning? TM:
Oh that’s
when I had it at my house. Yeah, it wouldn’t
stop playing, even when I turned it off, so I
had to unplug it and finally, before Rod
Sterling came into the picture, it finally
turned off! ZG:
But of
course that was an analogue sequencer, it was
all done with voltages… TM:
Absolutely!
It was crazy!
ZG:
Right TM: But
I’ll tell you some of the high points in my time
with Frank were playing that E-mu with the
sequencer, jamming with it, because it was
something you dreamed about being able to do but
you could never really do it in real time, no
instrument had that kind of real estate you
could sink your teeth into with a sequence. And I can remember doing
certain vamps for Frank, he’d say ‘Let’s put
this one’, say for instance you just need to
have a particular set of chords, just
robotically being played, but kind of artistic,
you know, to give you some inspiration and we’d
set it up, and it would be very effective in
rehearsals. Sometimes even when he would
audition people I’d set up a sequence, you know,
some odd meters sort of stuff. It was just so
great; you could play some chords and some inter
melodies that it would be an effective part of
the band. But the problem was that
the E-mu was not - I don’t know how far you want
to go with this in your interview? ZG:
All the
way, go! TM: Treat
it with a grain of salt, in respect to the E-mu
people.
The E-mu after a couple of years on the
road started getting ‘un-roadable’, it would
start spitting out this digital diarrhoea man,
you wouldn’t even know when it would happen, and
all of a sudden it would go (imitates broken
synth) “brr, kaarava brr brr mmu mm” , it would
just have its own personality. When Arthur
joined the band, our first European tour, when
Ike Willis, Arthur, Denny Walley, and I forget
who else, was it Warren?
(Cuccurullo), we were going to Europe and I
told Frank before the carny got shipped that
“Man, I don’t think the E-mu’s going to make
Europe, man, especially with the voltage
changes, and you hear how it’s been acting up” .
He said “Yeah, I know Mars”, and it was with the
snake (connecting keyboard to synth, you know it
was very sensitive. It wasn’t like the
Electrocomp; the E-mu was really meant to be a
studio instrument, especially the module that
Frank had; I don’t think it was ever meant to be
on the road. And this thing had already done
yeoman’s work for a year and a half on the road,
you know, three different tours the E-mu was on.
And now we were going to Europe with it, and it
was in the winter, and so he said “Alright Mars,
you know, we’re going to have to get something
else” and I had heard about the (Yamaha) CS-80,
which had just come out, and I said “Let me give
it a try. The CS-80, you know what I mean, it’s
not going to be the E-mu”, and it wasn’t, it
absolutely wasn’t. But what it
was, was something tremendous, it brought me to a new level of
expression; it didn’t have the finesse for me,
but having that marriage of digital and
analogue, there were certain things you could
never even hope to do with the E-mu, and more
than anything it was reliable. In other words it
wouldn’t be going crazy, you know, having a
nervous breakdown on stage. Frank was really upset that
we couldn’t take the E-mu but I said “Man, it’s
a liability Frank, it could just fuck up and
then we don’t have any, you know, backup”. So
that’s actually why the CS-80 came into the
picture. ZG:
The E-mu,
you know it’s in a museum in Paris TM:
Yes,
Arthur told me, the Musee de la Musique ZG:
Absolutely,
it’s in the same gallery as some of Edgar
Varese’s sirens and percussion instruments,
Frank would be so pleased. TM:
Well it
should be, of course he’s pleased, he’s just
smiling his ass off, looking down at us! But I heard, Arthur told
me, that the keyboard of it is lost! And that to
me is more criminal than anything. Because
that’s where the art came from, not just the
module but the actual keyboard. It was such a
distinctive actual keyboard, it was a very
interesting looking thing, and it’s really sad
that that’s not in the exhibit with the module. ZG:
I’ve
actually found the guy who’s got them, he’s got
two keyboards, the mono one and the poly one TM:
He has
the polyphonic E-mu keyboard? ZG:
Yeah. TM:
One of
them was monophonic which we never used, but the
polyphonic, he has that one? That had the
sequencer. ZG:
He bought
it in the Zappa family ‘Joe's Garage' sale
(March
1999). TM:
Before he
(FZ)
died? Right ZG:
Frank
donated the E-Mu in
June of that year
(1993),
and that’s when it got shipped over there,
and they couldn’t find the keyboards in the
studio. TM:
Oh my
God! ZG:
So later
they found them and phoned up the museum, and
this is unforgiveable, the curator said we’ve
already put the exhibit together, we haven’t got
room, and we don’t want them! TM:
Oh my
God! ZG:
I found
the guy, I’m going to try and get some pictures
out of him
(Many thanks to Ivan Schwartz who did indeed send me the photo’s as
promised - see the
E-mu pictures
page on this site.) TM:
Oh Lord
that is a crime, that is a real tragedy ZG:
But the
E-mu is there anyway stuck on the wall … TM:
Right, at
least it is there, you’re right, that’s respect,
that is total respect ZG:
The
description says that it was later used for a
guitar synth; I’m not sure about that… TM:
Never
was! Absolutely never was ZG: It’s obviously been carefully designed, it’s not like Frank said 'give me three of every module you’ve got…' TM:
Oh no… ZG:
So one
cabinet was a monophonic general-purpose synth,
and one was designed for polyphony with the
twelve small oscillators etc. TM:
That’s
the one that went on the road ZG:
So you
only took the polyphonic cabinet? TM:
We took
the polyphonic cabinet with the sequencer, yes ZG:
And the
other one with all that stuff… TM: … like
the ring modulator and the noise generator? That
wasn’t used ZG:
OK, that
makes more sense. So do you know who designed
that, was that Frank’s idea or did the E-mu
people suggest it? TM:
Well I
was led to believe that the E-mu people gave
Frank certain options, and he just chose them,
but oddly enough, if it was designed any other
way, where the one cabinet had certain stuff
that the other one didn’t, and vice versa, then
it wouldn’t have worked to my advantage. Because
when I came there, the way it was set up was
perfectly correlated to the Electrocomp. It was
like when opportunity meets talent, it worked
out perfectly, and, as I told you before, I
couldn’t believe how horrible the polyphony of a
pipe organ was, and how laughable it was; that’s
all Frank had on it when I got there ZG:
Right. TM: Of
course, it was such a boon when I was gotten
into the band, and Frank said ‘we’ve got to have
more Electrocomps’, and I said “you will have
them post haste”, and I called, Electronic Music
Laboratories in Connecticut where I came from,
and where I bought my first Electrocomp. For
them to
have the account, they were so proud of that,
and it was such a boon because, you know, it
wasn’t a very well-known synthesizer. ZG:
Just the
educational market originally … TM:
That’s
what it started as, a Title 5 grant I believe in
Connecticut for education. And they had a small
business of professionals that would use it, but
it was mostly for education.
And
that’s how Arthur found out about it, and it was
so funny when Arthur got in the band and he
found out that I played the Electrocomp, he was
so elated because he actually had one! And I
couldn’t believe that he actually had one ZG:
I didn’t
know that. TM:
Oh yeah,
that was a big bond for us when he got hired ZG:
It was a
little like the ARP 2600, a normalised modular
synth that you could patch. TM:
Right,
well it was a lot different but it was that
modular kind of feel to it, and you know a lot
of times, I would tell Midget
(Midget
Sloatman, FZ’s long-time electronics technician)
to do certain things on the E-mu, like put
switches on it, for instance instead of patching
the sequencer in with chords I would say ‘make a
switch’, and then he would put the same switch
in my Electrocomp so I didn’t have to put a
patch cord in to connect it, certain little
feeds, there are certain kind of custom little
switches, and that’s the work of Midget for my
considerations. ZG:
(after
explaining about the various custom modules -
see the
E-mu modules
page on this site) I’m looking at, on the
monophonic box, what looks like a mixing panel
with some black knobs; they don’t look like E-mu
knobs on it, which was down the bottom in the
middle TM:
This was
on the monophonic? ZG:
Yes TM:
Boy that
rings a bell but it’s so soft a ring I can’t
pick it up, I can remember those knobs, the
monophonic was so rarely used I can’t vouch for
that, I
don’t know. Hey did you notice if the monophonic
keyboard had a portamento? ZG:
I’m
waiting for the pictures so I don’t know which
model it was
(it was a Model 4000 keyboard and it did have portamento controls) TM: That
was kind of a strange thing with the Polyphonic
E-mu portamento, how it would logically go from
one note to another. That’s another great thing
about the CS-80, how it approached the
Portamento, that’s quite a sophisticated
process, you know. Portamento when you’re
dealing with polyphony; it’s weird enough anyway
when it’s just a monophonic axe but with
polyphony, as a player you have to adjust to the
time involved with it. The E-mu cats saw how I set
up the Electrocomp using one complete envelope,
in other words I didn’t use a VCA in sonic
territory, I was using it as a control device,
to control pitch and when they saw how I was
using that, using two oscillators having one
glide down to a note say, and the other one
maintain stationary, they said ‘oh my god we
never thought of that’. I had never thought of
it, it was an accident for me to discover the
use in terms of an LFO kind of a concept,
because you can’t hear it, it’s being used as a
control, and the attack would raise the pitch,
the decay would decline the pitch, and the
sustain would be where the pitch ended up. They
never thought that it could be used as a control
rather than a sound, so the E-mu was really set
up in a new, in a brand new way that it never
had been before. And of course, that’s the
reason why the monophonic wasn’t used that much
because it only had a limited amount of control
availability. ZG:
Anyway,
you mentioned Midget. Looking at one of the
custom modules, I know this wasn’t an E-mu one
because the jack sockets and switches are not
lined up, it looks handmade.
It’s a
little box with four jack sockets and five
switches, and another one with jack sockets and
XLR outputs, on the monophonic box on the bottom
right hand side TM:
A lot of
that is for recording directly. ZG:
OK that
figures, some sort of output TM: Although if I remember correctly all I had from mine whenever we played live were the regular outputs. I mean the studio was different, when we recorded Sheik Yerbouti I don’t know how many outputs Frank was taking from the synth, and then again Frank’s studio was being built then, so there was a lot of variables going on when that was being recorded. So those outputs are probably, there’s a lot of probably custom kind of output action going on there. And I know a few of those switches have to do with the sequencer. ZG:
OK I’ve
got one last mystery module for you, this one
might ring a bell and this one’s on the
polyphonic box, it’s in the top right corner TM:
In what
corner? ZG:
Top
right, it’s got no name on it, but it’s got a
knob that’s labelled chorus and normal, and
another one called master filter, looks like an
E-mu make, maybe it was a prototype, right in
the top right corner TM:
That’s
right, there was a some feature on the E-mu, if
I remember correctly, and it has been a long
time, that chorus is just a master de-tune, once
it’s all tuned up then you can make one bank of
oscillators detune, and it was on the upper
right corner? ZG:
Yeah TM:
Yeah I
can remember adjusting up there, that’s what it
is, it’s like a master de-tune, it’s like a
chorus. ZG:
So it
would de-tune one bank of oscillators? TM:
Exactly.
And you
know what, that brings back memories because
that was very
very
crucial. Understand that the E-mu sound had a
pitch change that
would start a major second above a note,
go
“Ba-yown, ba-yown, ba-yown, ba-yown , baa -own,
baa-own”, that’s actually the note it’s starting
from, but it’s gone “bra-own, bra-own” , so
you’re hearing that pitch change against “dung,
dung, dung”, so you’re getting a warm kind of
embouchure kind of sound, when you have the note
that they end on, it’s a little bit detuned.
That chorus knob way up there, would, when the
chord finally landed , pitch-wise, would be how
much beating would be going on in the chord. So
that required a lot of attention to how detuned
do you want this chord, owing to the fact that
it’s already had a pitch change as the note was
initiated. You get what I’m talking about? ZG:
I do, yeah TM: … a
lot of pitch change going on, so when the note
comes to the end, the pitch change, how much
beating is going to be there, so it’s a ‘season
to taste’ kind of thing, that I can remember
slaving
over in terms of the pitch, let alone when the
thing would go out of tune, that would be almost
a master tuner for me ZG: Ok,
Right TM: You
know what I mean, because it wasn’t like the
Electrocomp, the emu went out of tune a lot, I
had to tune that thing probably every forty five
minutes ZG:
Really,
because they always claimed that they were the
most stable oscillators in the world TM: Well,
in those days, that was stable! When you’ve got
so many variables, especially on stage with the
heat of those lights, and it was always on the
second row, it was closer to the lights than the
first level of the stage. So there would be a
lot of variables there, you know. Maybe I would
get by tuning it twice a night, but sometimes I
can remember having to touch up three times a
night. ZG:
OK TM:
I was just telling Arthur
(Barrow)
the other day, cats today; they don’t even know
about tuning a synthesizer, let alone tuning the
twelve oscillators of that particular
synthesizer, and all my other synths. With my
headphones on I could tune my whole setup, which
in total was about 15 to 20 oscillators; I would
have it all done in about one minute. And the
little Synkey, that little piccolo sound, was
the hardest to tune because it was the most
exposed, if that’s out of tune then it sounds
horrible, so sometimes before shows, if you
listen to show tapes you’ll hear me tuning that
little one, actually live, I mean not even with
the headphones, just tweaking it a little bit.
You know that sound I’m talking about right? ZG:
Sure… anyone who’s got a digital synth,
or even a software emulator, they’ve got no idea
you had to do that. TM:
Absolutely not. And that it would go out
of tune by what makes other things go out of
tune; temperature, humidity.
Of course the Electrocomp was better than
some because it had a heating unit that sort of
kept it at a kind of a constant temperature, but
not really, you know. It did the best it
possibly could. Because Mini-Moogs would go out
of tune, they were notorious. ZG:
Sure. TM:
And you were mentioning about the (Hammond)
organ? ZG: That’s
another one of the keyboards that is unique from
what I understand… TM:
Oh!
Unbelievably unique! The thing is, is that when
I joined the band we had a standard B-3 and then
Frank started getting into the SynDrums, and
they had a module for the SynDrums that they had
for keyboards and I said “Frank, wouldn’t it be
great if we could…” He had already cut-down the
B3, and also had it voltage controlled, and the
problem, unfortunately, with the cutting down
and the voltage control process was I had to
lose the 1 foot drawbar. You know, if you’re an
organist, that drawbar, it puts the icing on the
cake, you need that, the other ones are great
but that one foot is the highest drawbar, and
it’s the most sensitive.
But that’s the drawbar they needed to
make it voltage controlled, for some reason they
had to use that high root drawbar, the one foot,
so I never had that and it was sort of a thorn
in my side, being an organist, but – to have the
SynDrums on the organ was incredible, and a lot
of times people didn’t know that I was making
that sound, they would think it would be the
SynDrums, but it was actually coming from the
organ. Having tuned SynDrums that were an
ensemble, you know what I mean, a drummer would
have at the most maybe six or eight SynDrums,
but this is having 61 SynDrums, right
(laughs) ZG:
Right! TM:
And
pitch-wise it could run a large gamut. So I had
the SynDrums connected to the bottom keyboard,
and the minimoog connected to the top keyboard,
which was you know OK but you couldn’t do any
expressive stuff, you couldn’t add vibrato
obviously, there was no touch sensitivity in
those days, or polyphonic after-touch, or
anything. So, I, the thing I loved
about it though was Frank did buy another (set
of Taurus bass pedals), I came to the table with
my set of Taurus bass pedals which I keep under
the piano, but I said “Hey can we put the Taurus
bass pedals under the organ, and then have the
last octave of the organ also have the bass
pedals on the manual. They hooked it up that way
so I had the bass pedals under the organ, and it
also would be the last octave of the upper
manual. ZG:
Wow! So
what was that used on? TM:
It was
used on everything, you hear the Taurus bass
pedals a lot, and sometimes I used to play them
both together, the whole house would really rock
when you play a low C down there with both of
those Taurus bass pedals under the organ and the
piano. Course it use to almost give me a hernia,
from the angle you have to play it at, but no,
anytime you hear the SynDrums, it’s hard to know
if it’s me or Terry (Bozzio) ZG:
He had
about four on his kit TM:
Terry
had four, yeah. ZG:
and what
module did you use then? TM:
Oh my
God, the module I used was a custom module from
SynDrum. ZG:
OK TM:
They just
constructed one, they said when Frank got the
SynDrums for Terry, they said we also have this
other one that can be used sort of as a studio
thing, that can be hooked up to a keyboard, so
he said “wow fantastic”, but you know, we didn’t
just have a custom keyboard, I made the
suggestion let’s put it on the B3, if you’re
cutting it down anyway,
the voltage control those keyboards so we
can use it there, so that’s how it was used, but
I guess it was meant to be a module for any
keyboard player just to access with a voltage
control keyboard. Similar probably to what the
Polybox was, sort of a pitch follower. ZG:
So who
actually did the work, who customised the organ? TM:
I don’t
ever even remember the name SynDrum on it; it
was just a light green box with knobs on it. And
it had maybe, I don’t know, maybe four different
kinds of sounds, something like that. And of
course you could get the relative pitch; if you
didn’t want it to go into the beating area, or
too high up, you could adjust the general range
of it. I don’t know if they ever marketed that
unit for other things ZG:
I’ve
never heard of anything like that. TM:
I think
Frank was one of the only people that had that
custom module, I say custom module that might
have been the prototype for all I know. But you
never saw it, it was under the organ, it’s like
so many people, there were such illusions in
Frank’s show, “Where are the sounds really
coming from?”
You know what I mean, kind of a deceiving
thing. ZG:
In your
set-up on the Baby Snakes DVD most of the other
stuff looks fairly standard kit, like the Rhodes
and so on, is there anything else of interest? TM:
Did I use
the Vocoder on ‘Baby Snakes’? ZG:
I don’t
know… TM:
It would
be to the left side of the Electrocomp or the
Mini. Then again in Baby Snakes Peter
(Wolf)
is playing the E-mu too, that always uh…, but
then again you know Frank had to split the
instruments up
to a certain degree so, you know what I
mean it just… Peter was a mini player, he wasn’t
like an Electrocomp kind of cat, and his finesse
with the E-mu was… I was so glad the next tour
that I was playing the E-mu. ZG:
FZ
complained in an interview about his E-mu player
using his Mini-moog for solos. TM:
That’s
Peter, I could have told you, that’s Peter! ZG:
… and
then said that he was so disheartened that he
put the $50,000 E-mu in storage. TM:
But
that’s not the reason though, he gave it to me
the next tour, and I would sort of use it
chordally soloing, but it wasn’t really a solo
instrument, it never was set up like that. And
the thing is, what it was used for was perfectly
legitimate orchestrationally for what he needed,
the reason the E-mu got retired is because it
had a nervous breakdown, the thing was not
roadable believe me, it was frightening, from
out of nowhere it would spit out this digital
kind of craziness; you know actually it wasn’t
digital it was analogue craziness! But it was
the snake, I still think Midget would agree with
me that it was the snake involving the
sequencer; some strange activity involving the
sequencer within the snake triggered the thing
to start playing itself. And I mean that could
kill a show, you know what I mean, and it did!
There was a couple of times when I had to jump
off my seat really fast and turn it off, you
know, turn the volume down to nothing because it
had started going. And Frank, you know, I would
do it before Frank really noticed, he probably
thought I was noodling around for a second, but
that’s the reason the E-mu got retired, it never
was meant to be really a road instrument the way
we were on the road. ME: No TM:
Is that
how much Frank said he spent on the E-mu, fifty
grand? I never knew it was that much, I thought
it was more towards thirty, like twenty-five,
thirty, I never knew it was fifty ZG:
That’s
what he said TM:
It could
have been… ZG:
Yeah – if
he bought all the memory, you had to pay
hundreds of dollars for every 16k of memory. TM:
Yeah, you
remember those days, of having to save
everything on a cassette tape? ZG:
Of
course. TM:
(Laughs)
I’ll never forget I lost this tape, left it in a
hotel room once, I had to go, it was just by the
nick of time I got back to the airport in time
to get the plane, I left one little bag in my
hotel room, I forgot, you know that it was
there, and it was a backup tape and I had lost
the other one so I had to have it. ZG:
What
about the Yamaha CS-80? TM:
The
CS-80 with that polyphonic after touch was
probably one of the most dream come true
instruments I had ever played, and strictly
because of the polyphonic after touch.
I can
remember coming up with like a string quartet
sound, and it used to just melt Frank, the
sensitivity of each finger being able to have a
different level of vibrato, and volume. The ring
modulation on that was incredible, I used to do
so much with the portamento with the ring
modulation, and it would happen so fast, I mean
you would have to have three or four different
instruments before, to do the same things you
were doing in one second with the CS80. Yes it
wasn’t the brass sound that I had had before
with the E-mu, and it never could be because it
wasn’t designed like that, there was not enough
independence with each of the voices. And it was
a real bitch to master tune, it was a very
difficult and deceiving instrument to tune up,
but, it didn’t go out of tune regularly. It was
digital, so it had the digital part of it
controlling the pitch, a lot better than any
analogue instrument before, but when you had to
do a master tune, like every two months or so,
Klaus Wiedermann,
Frank’s
main tech,
he was the one that figured out how to
tune it so he would always say “oh no, we have
to tune it again?”
I don’t
know if you were familiar with that axe, but it
was really hard, it was like a floating eighth
voice in it that you had to find. ZG:
Right TM:
But if I
had to not use the E-mu, that was the proper
instrument at the right time, then again I only
had like three weeks to learn it, it had to go
on the ship to go to Europe, so I only took
three weeks to get close with it and then we
were on tour, so it was tough, because he (FZ)
said “I want this thing to sound as close to the
E-mu as possible”.
I said
this would probably be the only instrument
that’s available right now, the Prophet
really wasn’t happening at that point, it
still wasn’t really reliable, and we had a
prototype version that they were building for me
and I was asking for
certain things that they weren’t able to
provide, and it kept overheating. Finally Frank
got frustrated and says “Nah, we’re not going to
go for this” so it went to Joe Zawinul, and he
was able to use it happily. But right after that
we went right for the CS80 because although the
Prophet was closer to the E-mu in the way it
sounded, the CS80 could do so many other things
that the Prophet and the E-mu just couldn’t
ever. It was so organic, especially with that
zip strip too, it was great to be able to use
pitch control with just a piece of wire. ZG: OK
TM:
I was
very happy with that instrument, but you know
there were only four different available sounds
that you could make yourself. Other than that
you would be able to sculpt the sounds that they
already had in there a teeny little bit live. I
mean, it was still a great advancement, nothing
was set in stone or perfect but it was certainly
just what I needed at that moment. I would have
wanted more programmable sounds but that was all
that was available, just four. Each one of them has to use
only one sound; I had to have only one for wind.
We needed certain cues in the show, so I had to
waste one of them totally on white noise
unfortunately, which seemed like a huge waste,
to only have white noise on a programmable
sound, but that’s the way it had to be used. ZG:
Did you
ever play Frank’s ARP 2600? TM: Right,
by the time I got into the band in ‘77 it was
pretty much out of the door, you know what I
mean , the E-mu was the king of the road at that
time, but I played it a couple of times. It was
an interesting instrument, it wasn’t one that I
was real close to, but it was a great axe. I
played it a couple of times, but of course it
never went on the road with us, and by that time
the E-mu was in. ZG: OK. TM:
You know
don’t forget about the vocoder too! It was so
funny how it happened because we had gotten to
New York, and I had a background in like, being
a choirmaster and an organist in churches before
I got to Frank so I liked that choral kind of
effect anyway, you know what I mean, that’s part
of my DNA is to have a choral kind of sound. I
was sick, and I couldn’t go to Manny’s (Manny’s music store in New York). Frank and a couple of the
other cats went to Manny’s and he was buying
some stuff, and he says “Mars, I’ve got the
greatest instrument for you; you are absolutely
going to have a heart attack”. I says “What’s
up?” He says “I’ve bought you a choir!”
(laughs). He says it’s an instrument called a
vocoder, and I’d heard the name but I’d never
actually seen one before, and sure enough, they
had it all set up for me at sound check. And I
mean I didn’t even know how to work it or learn
how to use it so that it didn’t feedback with
ambient sound, it had its own incredibly
sophisticated properties, but he actually said
“You’re going to use it tonight aren’t you?” I
said “Frank what are you talking about? I’ve
just got it!” He said “I want you to use it
tonight”, so we actually used it, I think the
gig was up at Stony Brook
(State
University of New York, Stony Brook - 15th
October 1978), that’s the first time I ever
used it. But that instrument was so
expressive, it had the women’s choir kind of
sound that you hear on a lot of recordings with
Frank, it’s unmistakeable. And of course,
depending on how much simulator you have you can
hear what you are actually singing, but a lot of
times you can’t hear the words that I’m singing,
it’s actually not very understandable. The other
sound it had we called it the ‘Ant sound’, it
had no vibrato, it sounded very robotic, and it
sounded like Alien kind of voices, and Frank
actually loved that. Midget devised a switch on
it so Frank’s mike would trigger it, and I
actually had the switch on the Vocoder, so I
could switch Frank’s voice on any time I ever
wanted. There were certain parts of the show
where it was necessary, and sometimes he’d just
give me a look like “I want my voice on the
vocoder” and I would know that, but then
sometimes I would trigger it, even if he didn’t
even ask for it (laughs), which used to freak
him out, he didn’t know where it was coming
from, you now he didn’t put it together, he had
more things on his mind. And if you notice I
always had two microphones as well, one to
trigger the vocoder and one for my normal vocal
mic ZG:
OK TM:
But the
Vocoder, that was used a lot, especially in that
period of you know sheik Yerbouti, Joes garage,
all over the place even ah, what album is ‘The
Blue Light’ from? Is it ‘Tinsel Town’? ZG:
Yes TM:
‘The Blue
Light, there’s some vocoder stuff on that man,
and I always liked the Korg vocoder versus any
other one, there was something real sensitive
about it. Actually Korg throughout the years
have done pretty darn good products ZG:
(Waffles
on about my experiences with EMS vocoders and
noisy synths...). TM:
I get it,
and let alone any sound that came in would
trigger it, so you really had to focus your
mouth on that microphone, that’s what I meant
about ambient feedback. It was a very tricky
instrument to play live with other sounds, but I
developed the science of how to position the
microphone and what not. Frank loved that
instrument; it really beefed up, you know, it
gave it a real symphonic, especially with the
brass and the chorus in fact it was very
operatic some times ZG:
Sure TM:
Things
like ‘Yellow Snow’ or ‘Strictly Genteel’, the
big ones of Franks, you know what I mean, or
even ‘Sofa’, something that was like an anthem
kind of thing, or even ‘Punky’s Whips’, sounds
like that, his ‘faux classical’ sound. ZG:
I’m going
to have a good old listen to them… TM:
Oh yeah,
I still miss him every day, there’s something
about Frank that just won’t let go ZG:
We need
people like him around now really… TM:
You bet!
Well, it was great speaking with you and send me
a copy of the book when you get it done. ZG:
I
certainly will, it’s been an absolute pleasure,
thanks ever so much Tommy. TM:
It’s my
pleasure and thank you for thinking of me.
Well you
take care of yourself and uh peace! ZG:
Yeah
peace to you as well Tommy, all the best. TM:
All the
best, bye bye. *** *Footnote -
According to Marco Alpert from E-mu, it
wasn't so much the travelling that proved too
much for the synth, but the partying: *** The above is an edited
transcript of a telephone interview with Mr.
Thomas Mariana (aka Tommy Mars) conducted by
Mick Ekers (Zappa's Gear) on September 8th
2011. Subsequent comments and additions are in
italics. Reproduced with the kind permission of Tommy
Mars.
Copyright © Mick
Ekers |
Veteran Frank Zappa
keyboard player Tommy Mars talks to Zappa’s Gear
about Frank Zappa’s famous E-mu synthesizer and
how touring with the Zappa band eventually led
to it having a nervous breakdown!