Zappa.com

Does anyone know where I can find an extensive explination of The Big Note Theory by Zappa himself on the net ? Any help would be greatly appreciated!!

How about ANY explination of the Big Note Theory??

This I found on http://www.arf.ru/Notes/Lg/lg2.html

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Music is the best. Music composed by FZ is the very best!

Thanks, that's a good start. I'm surprised Frank himself hasn't said more on the subject. Maybe nobody was curious enough to ask him. Too bad, it sounds like a fascinating theory!

Life does not beat in 4/4 time...
This is something I came up with a while back.
I guess it could be considered parallel to Frank's conception...

I have always knew that sound is a pre-requisite of music!
Musician's are basically note sequencers.
We try and choose or place notes in a most logical sequence to form a musical idea.
We, as composers, enjoy placing a certain note followed by another note, or sound, to intrigue our interests.

It's basically like a painter adding a stroke of color followed by another that makes sense in logistical terms to the creator in their sequential creativity.

It's so fundamental.
Frank Zappa knew exactly what sound meant to him and how he was at liberty to utilize sound to his every whim and desire.

I believe it was that sound is so free and without restraint that Frank respected this element to it's fullest!

right on/

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if you go here:
http://home.online.no/%7Ecorneliu/interviews.htm
you'll find a number of excellent interviews/reviews,
two of which under the title of The Mother Of All Interviews 1992 (most of the way down the page)
should give a fairly full explanation of the Big Note theory
cheers

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

There's a lot of interesting stuff, about music and other things, in that interview. But, nothing about "The BIG NOTE Theory."

See, Zappa did not come up with the Big Note Theory himself.

Spider did:


- from Lumpy Gravy

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"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

Yeah, but weren't the voices under the piano "guided" by Zappa? I thought he gave them topics to discuss. I can picture him saying something like, "talk about how the whole universe is made up of one big note".

hunh!
maybe my memory's bad.
I thought it was that discussion. . .
tho this is not much help, maybe one of those other interview/discussions on that page?
I HAD read that article years ago and it took a long time to find it again. so when I did I just posted it without having re-read it. (follow thru is not one of my strong suits).
yer totally right that Spider Barbour's the one credited with that stuff in Lumpy Gravy.
maybe if I re-read the article (gimme a couple days) I can find the quotes that led me to the thought that FZ, Groening and folk WERE talking about such a 'note'.

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

the way my brain works LG, to say 'Everything is happening all the time' as FZ says below is the same as saying 'everything is made of the same element' . . . like Spider did inside the piano . . .
that's where I made the connection LG. To me, the 'when' is the 'big note'.

ok, here we go, interview w FZ (excerpt) by Don Menn, with Matt Groening, 1992.


MG: let's talk about your ideas about time.
Well, I think that everything is happening all the time, and the only reason why we think of time linearly is because we are conditioned to do it. That's because the human idea of stuff is it has a beginning and it has an end.I don't think that's necessarily true. You think of time as a constant, a spherical constant -

MG:-in which-
- Everything's happening all the time, always did, always will....

MG: So this coffee cup -
- Was always full, and always empty -

MG: - and it's always being drunk and it's always being heated -
- And it's always being thrown, and the guy was always painting it, and so on and so forth. Everything is always.

MG: why does this empty cup make sense to me?
I don't know.

MG: You know what I mean, though?
Is that a Zen question?

MG: No, why do I go, "Oh, I have already - the cup that drank no longer appears to be full."
Well, that's because it is not full at this particular version of -

MG: Our perceptions?
We're dealing with time in a quasi-practical manner. We have devised our own personal universe and lifestyle that is ruled by time sliced this way, and we progress from notch to notch, day by day, and you just learn to meet your deadlines that way. That's only for human convenience. That, to me, is not a good explanation of how things really work. That's only the human perception version of how this work. It seems just as feasible to me that everything is happening all the time. And whether you believe your coffee cup is full or not is irrelevant. It's like - here's another way to explain it. What something is depends more on when it is than anything else. You can't define something accurately until you understand when it is.

MG: When in time.
Yeah, when is what. Without the perfect understanding of when, you've got nothing to deal with, see? 'Cause you analyze that cup of coffee a little bit earlier, and it's full. In a few minutes, you'll kick it over, and it won't even exist anymore. The state of the cup is determined by when you're perceiving it.

DM: which means that the future has already happened.
Yeah. And the reason why I feel so strongly about this is, you know, this is one of the better explanations for why people can have premonitions, because instead of looking ahead, they're just looking around. You don't have to look ahead to see the future. You can look over there.

DM: That was going to be my next question. What limits our perceptions of other things or other times or the future?
I think you devise your own limits for your own personal convenience. There are some people who wish to have limits, and they'll invent as many boxes for themselves as they want. It's like, you know, men invented armor. They wanted to protect themselves from the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune and so forth. And people do the same thing psychically and psychologically. They build their own armor. They build their own rathole, whatever it is. And they choose their existence. Whether they do it consciously or whether it is helped along by a government or an education system, somebody is helping to shape this imaginary box you live in, but it doesn't have to be there.

DM: Then what are the limits to our being able to understand what the whole purpose of any of our lives is?
Well, why do you have to? I think that when is a very important thing, but "what the fuck" is also a very important thing to ask. Just keep asking, "What the fuck?" I mean, why the fuck bother? See what I mean? The important thing is, deal with the when. When will open a lot of shit for you. "What the fuck" really makes it easier to deal with it when you understand the when.

DM: You sound like a very mystical but common-sense guy, because you've always talked about the common sense solution as always the best solution to anything, and yet this is very mystical.
Why is it mystical? Can you understand that when is important? What's mystical about that?

DM: Well, not just that question so much as the idea that time is a Moebius vortex
-No, the shape of the universe is a Moebius vortex I believe that. Time is a spherical constant. Now imagine a Moebius vortex inside a spherical constant, and you've got my cosmology. But when is very important.

MG: How does music composition fit into that?
It's just something that you do. You know, I can do it, so I do it. You can draw cartoons and so you do it, and you can make people laugh and you do it. And that's what you do. And if somebody tried to keep you from doing it, you'd kill them, wouldn't you?

MG: Yes. See, I judge the universe by pencil mileage.
That's a pretty linear kind of thing. And the callus on my finger. I used to get that when I wrote with a pen.In fact,this finger right here has a permanent dent right in that bone from just holding that nub of a pen, and going [choking, strugging sound] like with those little dots, and now I get cramps in this arm from holding my thumb like this to do a certain move on the keypad to make the Synclavier do something. But in the larger scheme of things, what's a little nub in your finger or a twisted thumb? So long as somebody gets a laugh out of it, what the fuck?

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

I have the magazine the interview is taken from and I've read it over and over again. It's one of my favorite Zappa-interviews.

And, yeah, maybe Zappa came up with it himself, and 'guided' the piano people to talk about it...

maybe Spider came up with the words "the big note"...

or; maybe Spider did come up with it himself, and Zappa stole it from him...



I really don't think it's that important (who came up with it, I mean).

Zappa's theory that 'everything is happening at the same time' is very interesting, though.
I am totally convinced he was right.

He talks more about that in this interview:

Interview by Bob Marshall, October 22, 1988 page 4 (of 10)

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"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

cool!
you gotta anymore of this stuff online Lumpy?

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" . . . On the outside now . . ."

Oh, I haven't put it online. I found that Bob Marshall interview here:

FZ Interviews & Articles

Lots of great stuff.

And yeah, that Bob Marshall interview is awesome.

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"bit of nostalgia for the old folks."

It's important to differentiate not, with a diversification between sound and vibration...

Zappa's "everything is happening right now" concept is right on target!
We must learn to treat our own little universe's as just that ...Universes...

Everything outside our universe is subjective at best...

The one note theory is actually quite basic, yet extremely important to understand.
I firmly believe that everything is of one vibration.
I think a lot of people are in accordance with this theory.

The more we unravel the mysteries of the universe and it's matter, the more we simplify it's makeup.
The more dimensions, the more simplification.

Here on the internet we use 2D. Yet we are utilizing 2D from a 3D standpoint. However, it is apparent as a result of this anonymity which makes up 2D, that the illusion paradoxically clouds the distinction between 2D and 3D.

It is also apparent that individuals become quite disillusioned in 2D more so than their 3D environment. Just my speculation.
For me to live in a 3D environment and view a 2D environment is a walk in the park in the understanding of what takes place and how illusion predominates.

Now what does this have to do with the big note? A fair question indeed.
I was just spewing how the unraveling of dimensions allows for a more deeper and simplistic understanding.
It's like unraveling an onion. Dimensional knowledge will increase in the conscious, it's inevitable.

The big note is that final dimension which everything emanates from.
A vibration which is dispersed, through illusion, into a google amount of tiny vibrations that we distinguish as having their own personalities

Wow! Now my Brain Hurts. Frank was actually right, but I doubt any plastic government bastard (like me) would admit it if this would (it probably won't) become the leading theory.
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Harry, You're a Beast!