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Uncle Meat
''Uncle Meat'' is the fifth studio album by the Mothers of Invention, released as a double album in 1969. ''Uncle Meat'' was originally developed as a part of ''No Commercial Potential'', a project which spawned three other albums sharing a conceptual connection: ''We're Only in It for the Money'', '' Lumpy Gravy'' and ''Cruising with Ruben & the Jets''. The album also served as a soundtrack album to a proposed science fiction film which would not be completed, though a direct-to-video film containing test footage from the project was released by Frank Zappa in 1987. The music is diverse in style, drawing from orchestral, jazz, blues and rock music. ''Uncle Meat'' was a commercial success upon release, and has been highly acclaimed for its innovative recording and editing techniques, including experiments in manipulation of tape speed and overdubbing, and its diverse sound. Background Frank Zappa, who had been interested in film since high school, decided to develop a fi ...
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The Mothers Of Invention
The Mothers of Invention (also known as The Mothers) was an American rock band from California. Formed in 1964, their work is marked by the use of sonic experimentation, innovative album art, and elaborate live shows. Originally an R&B band called the Soul Giants, the band's first lineup included Ray Collins, David Coronado, Ray Hunt, Roy Estrada, and Jimmy Carl Black. Frank Zappa was asked to take over as the guitarist following a fight between Collins and Coronado, the band's original saxophonist/leader. Zappa insisted that they perform his original material, and on Mother's Day in 1965, changed their name to the Mothers. Record executives demanded that the name be changed, and so "out of necessity," Zappa later said, "we became the Mothers of Invention." After early struggles, the Mothers earned substantial popular commercial success. The band first became popular playing in California's underground music scene in the late 1960s. With Zappa at the helm, it was signed t ...
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Cruising With Ruben & The Jets
''Cruising with Ruben & the Jets'' is the fourth studio album by the Mothers of Invention, released under the alias Ruben and the Jets. Released on December 2, 1968 on Bizarre and Verve Records with distribution by MGM Records, it is a concept album, influenced by 1950s doo-wop and rock and roll. The album's concept deals with a fictitious Chicano doo-wop band called Ruben & the Jets, represented by the cover illustration by Cal Schenkel, which depicts the Mothers of Invention as anthropomorphic dogs. It was conceived as part of a project called ''No Commercial Potential'', which produced three other albums: ''Lumpy Gravy'', ''We're Only in It for the Money'' and ''Uncle Meat''. The album and its singles received some radio success, due to its doo-wop sound. Subsequently, the name Ruben and the Jets continued with a different lineup, led by musician Rubén Guevara Jr., who recorded the albums '' For Real!'' (1973) and '' Con Safos'' (1974). Zappa produced the former. Background ...
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Scully Recording Instruments
Scully Recording Instruments was an American designer and manufacturer of professional audio equipment for recording studios and broadcasters. History Background John J. Scully was a machinist who worked for sewing machine manufacturer Wheeler & Wilson before going to work for the Columbia Phonograph Company in 1904. During his employment at Columbia, Scully was put in charge of the company's experimental laboratories and improved the design of the Dictaphone. Independently of his work at Columbia, Scully designed and perfected his first disc recording apparatus in 1909. Scully left Columbia Phonograph Company in 1918 and became a technical engineer for General Phonograph Corp. for a year. Recording lathes In 1919, John J. Scully founded Scully Recording Instruments in Bridgeport, Connecticut as a manufacturer of disc cutting lathes. The original Scully lathe was a mechanical, weight-driven device that utilized three weights (the largest being 100 pounds) attached to pulleys ...
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Multitrack Recording
Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking or tracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive whole. Multitracking became possible in the mid-1950s when the idea of simultaneously recording different audio channels to separate discrete "tracks" on the same reel-to-reel tape was developed. A "track" was simply a different channel recorded to its own discrete area on the tape whereby their relative sequence of recorded events would be preserved, and playback would be simultaneous or synchronized. A multitrack recorder allows one or more sound sources to different tracks to be simultaneously recorded, which may subsequently be processed and mixed separately. Take, for example, a band with vocals, guitars, a keyboard, bass, and drums that are to be recorded. The singer's microphone, the output of the guitars and keys, and eac ...
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Anthropomorphism
Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions, or intentions to non-human entities. It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals. Etymology Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization derive from the verb form ''anthropomorphize'', itself derived from the Greek ''ánthrōpos'' (, "human") and ''morphē'' (, "form"). It is first attested in 1753, originally in reference to the heresy of applying a human form to the Christian God.''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1st ed. "anthropomorphism, ''n.''" Oxford University P ...
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Cal Schenkel
Calvin "Cal" Schenkel (born January 27, 1947, Willow Grove, Pennsylvania) is an American illustrator, graphic designer, animator and comics artist, specializing in album cover design. He was the main graphic arts collaborator for rock musician Frank Zappa and was responsible for the design of many Zappa album covers. Schenkel's work is iconic and distinctive in style, a forerunner of punk art and the new wave era. Background and education Schenkel grew up in Oreland, Pennsylvania. He attended the Philadelphia College of Art but left after one semester and set out to build a career. As an unemployed artist in New York City in 1967 Schenkel was introduced to Zappa by his then girlfriend, singer Sandy Hurvitz (later known as Essra Mohawk).Schenkel's interview
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Science Fiction
Science fiction (sometimes shortened to Sci-Fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, extraterrestrial life, sentient artificial intelligence, cybernetics, certain forms of immortality (like mind uploading), and the singularity. Science fiction predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb, robots, and borazon, whose names entirely match their fictional predecessors. In addition, science fiction might serve as an outlet to facilitate future scientific and technological innovations. Science fiction can trace its roots to ancient mythology. It is also related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has beco ...
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Overdub
Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more available tracks of a digital audio workstation (DAW) or tape recorder. The overdub process can be repeated multiple times. This technique is often used with singers, as well as with instruments, or ensembles/orchestras. Overdubbing is typically done for the purpose of adding richness and complexity to the original recording. For example, if there are only one or two artists involved in the recording process, overdubbing can give the effect of sounding like many performers. In vocal performances, the performer usually listens to an existing recorded performance (usually through headphones in a recording studio) and simultaneously plays a new performance along with it, which is also recorded. The intention is that the final mix will contain ...
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Rock Music
Rock music is a broad genre of popular music that originated as " rock and roll" in the United States in the late 1940s and early 1950s, developing into a range of different styles in the mid-1960s and later, particularly in the United States and United Kingdom.W. E. Studwell and D. F. Lonergan, ''The Classic Rock and Roll Reader: Rock Music from its Beginnings to the mid-1970s'' (Abingdon: Routledge, 1999), p.xi It has its roots in 1940s and 1950s rock and roll, a style that drew directly from the blues and rhythm and blues genres of African-American music and from country music. Rock also drew strongly from a number of other genres such as electric blues and folk, and incorporated influences from jazz, classical, and other musical styles. For instrumentation, rock has centered on the electric guitar, usually as part of a rock group with electric bass guitar, drums, and one or more singers. Usually, rock is song-based music with a time signature using a verse–chorus form, ...
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Blues
Blues is a music genre and musical form which originated in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture. The blues form is ubiquitous in jazz, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll, and is characterized by the call-and-response pattern (the blues scale and specific chord progressions) of which the twelve-bar blues is the most common. Blue notes (or "worried notes"), usually thirds, fifths or sevenths flattened in pitch, are also an essential part of the sound. Blues shuffles or walking bass reinforce the trance-like rhythm and form a repetitive effect known as the groove. Blues as a genre is also characterized by its lyrics, bass lines, and instrumentation. Early traditional blues verses consisted of a single line repeated four times. It was only in the first decades of the 20th century that the most common current str ...
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Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ...
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Orchestral Music
An orchestra (; ) is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which combines instruments from different families. There are typically four main sections of instruments: * bowed string instruments, such as the violin, viola, cello, and double bass * woodwinds, such as the flute, oboe, clarinet, saxophone, and bassoon * Brass instruments, such as the horn, trumpet, trombone, cornet, and tuba * percussion instruments, such as the timpani, snare drum, bass drum, cymbals, triangle, tambourine, and mallet percussion instruments Other instruments such as the piano, harpsichord, and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone as soloist instruments, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments and guitars. A full-size Western orchestra may sometimes be called a or philharmonic orchestra (from Greek ''phil-'', "loving", and "harmony"). The actual number of musicians employed in a ...
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