Xenochrony

Xenochrony is a studio-based musical technique developed at an unknown date, but possibly as late as the early 1960s by Frank Zappa. He used this technique to great effect on several albums. Xenochrony is executed by extracting a guitar solo or other musical part from its original context and placing it into a completely different song.

Etymology

The word derives from the Greek words (strange or alien) and (time).

Examples

One of the most prominent examples of xenochrony can be found on Zappa's rock opera "Joe's Garage" (1979), on which the guitar solos are all xenochronous (with the exceptions of "Watermelon In Easter Hay" and "Crew Slut").

In the words of Zappa himself:

A classic "Xenochrony" piece would be "Rubber Shirt", which is a song on the Sheik Yerbouti album. It takes a drum set part that was added to a song at one tempo. The drummer was instructed to play along with this one particular thing in a certain time signature, eleven-four, and that drum set part was extracted like a little piece of DNA from that master tape and put over here into this little cubicle. And then the bass part, which was designed to play along with another song at another speed, another rate in another time signature, four-four, that was removed from that master tape and put over here, and then the two were sandwiched together. And so the musical result is the result of two musicians, who were never in the same room at the same time, playing at two different rates in two different moods for two different purposes, when blended together, yielding a third result which is musical and synchronizes in a strange way. That's Xenochrony. And I've done that on a number of tracks. [Citation
last = Marshall
first = Bob
author-link =
last2 =
first2 =
author2-link =
title = Interview with Frank Zappa
place=
publisher =
year = 1988
location =
volume =
edition =
url = http://www.science.uva.nl/~robbert/zappa/interviews/Bob_Marshall/Part07.html
doi =
id = ]

ee also

* Polyrhythm

References

External links

* [http://mixonline.com/recording/business/audio_mothers_sound/ Discussion of Zappa studio techniques including Xenochrony]