In this video I take a look at Steve Vai's transcriptions of Zappa's "Jazz Discharge Party Hats" and "The Dangerous Kitchen". The pieces showcase Zappa's use of the Sprechstimme technique which is a vocal performance that is half spoken and half sung.
Steve Vai had the arduous task of transcribing these pieces, and in this video, I attempt to replicate the process and present some approaches and strategies for transcribing speech using music notation.
CHAPTERS:
0:00 Introduction
3:05 How To Approach Writing Speech In Music Notation
8:00 George Carlin's Time
9:09 Building Rhythmic Templates
13:40 Nested Tuplets
15:52 When Speech Becomes Music (Reference to Diana Deutsch's "Speech to Song Illusion")
17:54 Man Versus Woodlouse
19:29 1950s Blues Guitarists' Speech Inflected Solos