News, Thunes, Bass, Zappa, Stuff...
Scott updates Geoscott.com (for the first time in months)
Posted on 21 May 2008 by Steve
bleedin' hell!
http://www.geoscott.com/
First a story about being given the rock star cool-shoulder 'I have no idea who you are and don't care either type expression' treatment from Joe Jackson and co (what's the world coming to when THE Scott Thunes gets treated like an ORDINARY PERSON... the indignity of it!!), then a story about a strangely information-free interview in 'Marin Magazine'
nothing about music really, although we discover ST is the world's biggest Graham Maby fan, which is apparent to anyone who's heard Scott's 1984-era thrubbings
Hi There!
Posted on 23 Apr 2008 by Steve
Apologies for anyone waiting for new transcriptions... most of these scores were transcribed between xmas 2007 and March 2008, and I kinda wanted a little break from it.
As you can imagine, it's intricate stuff that requires a lot of ear power, and I needed a break from doing it night after night after night.
So, i'll be back adding new stuff, shortly :)
Good news (for me anyway), this site now appears on the first page in Google for 'bass transcriptions'. So if you got here that way, thanks for coming... and CHECK OUT THE THUNES!!
Oh, and i'm sorry you've not been able to add comments... I was getting spammed a lot (GRR) and it seemed the only way
your pal
Steve
interesting Zappa related thesis
Posted on 25 Feb 2008 by Steve
while browsing Google Books, I stumbled across an interesting thesis by a gentleman called Brett Clement on Frank's melodies... haven't read it all yet, but I thought i'd share it for anyone of a musical persuasion
it has an analysis of Black Page #1 (which i've only skimmed so I can't tell you whether I agree with any of it) which contains what look to be accurate extracts of the score.. so if you like Zappa scores.. maybe worth a look
it's a PDF document, so get that copy of Adobe Reader at the ready
All You Need Is Loaf...
Posted on 23 Feb 2008 by Steve
A couple more from 'Broadway The Hard Way' are there... 'Bacon Fat' and 'Stolen Moments'...
remember Scott's derogatory echoing of some horn player's solo 'lick' (Make A Jazz Noise Here, Black Napkins, bar 112)...? well there's another subtle one in 'Stolen Moments'... Scott must have heard the same little phrase in the same place for months on end, so he decided to play it along with Walt Fowler... bar 52...
Battlestar Galactica?
Posted on 21 Feb 2008 by Steve
Scott's rendition of 'Sharleena', the opening track from YCDTOSA 3, is up there... also featuring an impressive teenage solo from Dweezil...
This version was recorded right at the end of the 84 tour, and it shows.. the band is on great form... if you don't have this CD, go and buy it now!!!
an answer to Balint's question/s
Posted on 17 Feb 2008 by Steve
this was going to be a reply to a news comment but it got too big, so here it is...
-----------------------------------
Hi Balint, I like to make comments on little notable things in the music... there's usually a few bars here & there in each tune where he steps out from 'normal' bass playing and plays something far beyond the call of duty.. a two-octave run or the melody, or something harmonized with melody... and i'll comment on those things because they're often the most exciting bits
but other than that i'd rather spend my time actually doing the transcribing than talking about it... :)
i'm also trying to keep 'under the radar' a little bit... when I decided to do a Thunes site, I had no idea about the acrimonious situation between the Zappa Family Trust and all those fan sites, and how much trouble the ZFT and their lawyers could give you if they didn't like you... so I'd rather the site was all about musical notes than ME and my opinions on things...
out of Frank's other bass players, I like Artie, then Tom Fowler. I'm not as interested in Patrick O'Hearn... if I like the band, I generally like the bass player, and the Bozzio/O'Hearn band did kinda sloppy versions of some of Frank's best material... it was a facinating time, FZ was heading away from irregular meters (ie Big Swifty) and into fixed meters with unusual polyrhythms over the top (ie Black Page), but the Bozzio/O'Hearn band seemed to splurge testosterone all over things at the expense of taste & detail
Arthur Barrow was fantastic if a little bland at times, but perfect for allowing Vinnie to do the amazing stuff he did, and Tom Fowler took 'Frank Zappa bass playing' further than anyone did
but the reason I like Scott is that you can hear his personality coming through, it can be aggressive, intelligent, devastating clever and stupidly mongoloid within the same bar... I love his sound, and the fact that he made the tough stuff sound as effortless as the easy stuff
I prefer the 84/88 stuff to the 81/82 stuff because I don't like the sound of that Carvin bass, and most of the time he was playing pre-written parts without the kinds of embellishment that he came out with in 84 & 88... the 88 stuff in particular is my favourite, and I think being Clonemeister made it necessary for him to know all the parts inside out, which connected him to the music a bit better...
I have a rehearsal recording from 87, where Scott is clonemeistering the 88 band, and the bass is really loud, fantastic, even with all the rehearsal mistakes, and his bass drives the whole band a lot more than other bass players would need to do.. he's stampeding the way, and it's glorious
I mean, a bass player's job is to outline the basic harmony and rhythm of a piece... but if your job also includes dragging the whole band along with you, you have to be incredible.. and in 84 and 88, Scott was
I also think his accompanying of FZ's guitar playing in 81/82 wasn't as mature as in later years... early on, it was still terrific but slightly gimmicky... I can't think of many solos I prefer Scott's playing on in 81/82 than in later years
in the outside world, bass players I like are mostly from the rock world: John Paul Jones, John Entwistle, Graham Maby, Andy Rourke, Bruce Foxton, Paul Simonon... I don't require Thunes-esque precision & musicianship in everything I listen to, but I do like bass players who play with confidence & character
hey it does feel like an interview!
Zut Alors! c'est Zoot Allures
Posted on 13 Feb 2008 by Steve
Zoot Allures is one of my favourite Frank Zappa compositions, and the 88 performed it in a very similar way to the 84 band.
This transcription is the version from 'The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life'. Scott throws in some amusing chords (well, double-stops to be accurate) during the A mixolydian 'reggae' solo section.
It looks more evil in notation than it actually is to play, because the tempo is slow.. it's actually one of the more easy Thunes lines
Andy is here, and the forum has gone...
Posted on 10 Feb 2008 by Steve
No-one wants to use a forum on this site anyway, so away it goes... sorry to all two of you who registered :)
anyway, 'Andy' from 'The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life' is up there... a hard one because the bass is kinda low in the mix in parts, and there are all these open A's and octave A's that are really hard to pick out...
there's a passage at the end (bars 192 to 196, 5:08 on the CD, which you should go and BUY NOW!) where Scott plays some rather fabulously slick runs, that I never tire of hearing, for example:
interestingly, this rhythm pops up all over the place in FZ's music... a 4/4 bar with 4 dotted eighth notes (i.e. 4:3) and the last beat straight... see bar 26 of 'Harry, You're A Beast' and bar 27 of 'Inca Roads'
Thank you killuglyradio.com and zappa.hu
Posted on 08 Feb 2008 by Steve
a quick thanks to killuglyradio.com for featuring this site on their 'links for 7-2-2008'
and thanks to YOU for clicking on the link and checking this site out 
AND thank you to zappa.hu, who have also said nice things about the site... as a small token of my gratitude I have made your links bigger & bolder
Dashing thru the snow, in a one horse open sleigh...
Posted on 03 Feb 2008 by Steve
Penguin In Bondage (Swaggart Version) is up there.. gratuitous quintuplets aplenty... AND a Thunes rendition of 'Jingle Bells'
http://www.thescottthuneseffect.com/tbbynhiyl_penguin_in_bondage.php
Scott also can't resist a quotey echo during FZ's solo (bar 65) which is quite funny too 
Poodle dude Ben Watson speaks
Posted on 28 Jan 2008 by Steve
Dunno whether this new or not, but he uses some clever words here:
http://www.kindamuzik.net/article.shtml?id=492
as usual with Watson, lots about Marxism and nothing about the notes themselves, but then he's not a musician is he?
"and if you're out in the lobby, get in here..."
Posted on 27 Jan 2008 by Steve
ok, the 1988 version of The Black Page is up there, with all the usual Black Pagely goodness contained therein...
interesting to contrast this with the circus style version the 1984 band performed
Zappa talking about bass (from 1983)
Posted on 26 Jan 2008 by Steve
there's a good interview with FZ from 1983 about bass playing on AFKA, that i've just discovered:
http://www.afka.net/Articles/1983-03_Guitar_Player.htm
AFKA is an excellent site if you're interested in exploring a huge collection of zappa related articles & interviews etc... check it out!
Volcanoes and sweatpants... it can only be...
Posted on 23 Jan 2008 by Steve
..Allan Zavod, ladies and gentlemen!
http://www.afka.net/allan_zavod_interview.htm
word on the legendary Volcano Solo:
"every night we always played "Cleveland", never missed a night. He was a great leader. He had to keep everybody happy in the band. The way you make them happy is you played a big solo every night, but made it different. He didn't say it but we made it different every night. I never played the same solo twice. I played it a hundred and fifty times but I never repeated the same solo"
yeah right... :D
a slightly different version of events than Frank or Scott related...
and the famous sweatpants get a mention:
"Then I remember another time when I used to wear the same pants and then everybody got sick of them and then Frank finally wrote it in the show, it was called "Allan's Blue Pants". He used to change the words and the band would listen and they would answer. He would sing something like "Allan's blue pants" and then he would say something about how grotty and disgusting they were. "
"Oh Jesus, I just stuck the tip in... oh my God..."
Posted on 22 Jan 2008 by Steve
More Trouble Every Day (Swaggart Version) is up there now, containing one of my favourite Thunes phrases of all time:
I love the way the stream of notes spills over the bar.. that octave-5th-maj 3rd-2nd-root figure is something that turned up a lot in Scott's playing.. there's a similar phrase in the solo section of 'Sharleena' on YCDTOSA 3.... which I might do next because I love the bass on that one
pip pip!
If it ain't one thing, it's another...
Posted on 16 Jan 2008 by Steve
ok, The Dangerous Kitchen (from YCDTOSA 1 and the DHBIM video (same performance)) is up as requested... it's a bit of a tricky one, and you could notate it in a several ways but believe it or not, this is the most reader-friendly way I could find :)
interesting article here on FZ
Posted on 16 Jan 2008 by Steve
Oh No!
Posted on 15 Jan 2008 by Steve
this could probably have had the entire 1st section notated in 7/4, but I've made the bars generally follow the phrasing so it's nice and easy to read...
a very 'straight' solo section in 5/4... C# Dorian and some streams of 8th notes.. fairly trad in most respects, but this tune showcases how Scott & Chad could take it reasonably far out and still know exactly where the 'one' is, even in irregular meters... not as insane as 'Yuppies' 11/16 passage, but still impressive...
In Cold Sweat... Interviews With Scary Musicians
Posted on 12 Jan 2008 by Steve
ok, quick review.. this book doesn't give you many more insights into Scott Thunes' bass playing than you got in the famous interview in Bass Player magazine...
the gist of it is that playing at the low level of musicianship that being a rock bass player demands is not of any interest to him, unless it paid well and was with non-asshole musicians...
and the stuff he considers special is the music created when there was an opportunity to have a harmonic & melodic interplay during improvisatory periods... obviously we're talking during FZ's guitar solos... he says his bass playing is not intended to sit there and be great playing in isolation, but was created as a result of reaction and interaction with other instruments...
now, I took a decision that this site would only contain bass transcriptions... the last thing I wanted was for my vehicle to share my Thunes bass playing enthusiasms to overstep any mark that the ZFT had for reproduction of FZ's music... so, on tunes like the Black Page and Sinister Footwear 2, the bass line makes a lot more sense when you see it alongside the melody, and of course Scott's playing underneath FZ's guitar solos ONLY really makes sense when you can look at the two parts and see how they relate... anyway, you'll just have to go and buy the records to see how the parts fit together...
part of doing this is just because I like the look of sheet music, and you get more unusual occurrences per square inch in Zappa sheet music than any other rock musician.. I loved the Frank Zappa Guitar Book, because hardly anyone would ever be able to sight-read it, and it fitted in with the Zappa aesthetic (or ONE of the Zappa aesthetics), which was to give inconsequential minutae & trivia an EPIC and highly detailed treatment (Punky's Whips (silly rock star), Montana (floss), The Radio Is Broken (a huge setup just for a 'Your Anus' joke), etc), and on the other hand to treat 'serious' subjects with a dismissive flippancy... and I loved that a phrase of guitar playing that literally came out instantaneously over the course of 3 seconds or so, would produce 5-6 bars of polyrhythmic insanity that a person attempting to play would have to woodshed for a few hours, and probably have to spend a few years learning real music to understand properly the rhythmic stuff in there... all as a result of 2-3 seconds' unconscious finger wiggling somewhere on a stage a few years ago...
anyway, so these transcriptions might not be any use or give insights to the creative processes behind the Thunes playing, but they're not necessarily meant to...
the first part of Dupree's Paradise is up, as is Eat That Question.. all simple, orchestrated stuff that you get the impression that Thunes didn't really care for, but I love his playing of the orchestrated stuff because it goes beyond just 'playing the bass line'.. even in the simple Eat That Question, he harmonizes the line in 3rds one time through... something more bass players should do :)
Black Napkins
Posted on 10 Jan 2008 by Steve
the latest transcription is Black Napkins, from Make A Jazz Noise Here... there are some nice touches here... at bar 121, in between the two horn solos he grabs a loud high B (the minor 7th interval of the C#m chord) and just leaves it hanging for a long time... I love that note :)
also at bar 112 there's a funny echoing of the soloist's cliched scalar widdle of the previous bar... this particular bit of bass interaction is played with a slightly derogatory flourish
there are some neat triplets over the bar lines starting at 158, and some interesting slippage in and out of simple time... the group of 7 at bar 94 is probably not intentional, but these things always look great when written down, so in it goes
overall, the bass performance is fairly languid... whoever said Scott couldn't play walking bass 'properly' is probably right, but these kind of bass stylings are perfect for 'almost jazz' tunes like Black Napkins
Hello there
Posted on 09 Jan 2008 by Steve
Welcome to my little Scott Thunes transcription site... this is not a Thunes-worship-zone because worshipping rock musicians is a stupid hobby, but if you like amazing bass playing and get a kick out of really intricate music then maybe you'll like some of this stuff
If you've never heard any of Scott's bass playing before, I recommend the Frank Zappa album 'Make A Jazz Noise Here' as a first port of call... it has all those horrible cake-spoiling laminate-defacing jazz musicians on it but it's worth putting up with them for the bass playing 
seriously, go buy it... and everything else the Thunesmeister played on ( discography here: http://www.united-mutations.com/t/scott_thunes.htm )
what are you waiting for? grab a P-Bass and a pick, and get playing!