The Black Page

The Black Page is a piece of music of Frank Zappa. It first appeared on the album Zappa in New York ( 1978). His name ( German: black side ) refers to a tight notation with many notes to play.

The piece was originally written for drums and percussion, and later re-arranged in different versions, including a disco and a so-called New Age version.

The drummer Terry Bozzio reported in an interview, Zappa wrote the piece after he had always spoken of studio musicians of the orchestra Abnuceals Emuukha Electric Symphony Orchestra & Chorus of the fear to come to a recording session in the morning and confronted with a black page full of notes to become. After Bozzio had acquired the piece after two weeks of practicing, Zappa wrote the melody and chord progressions.

On the live album Zappa in New York ( 1978) Zappa mentioned the " statistical density " ( " statistical density" ) of the piece. It is written in 4/4-time under excessive use of triplets, quintuplets, septuplets, etc., including nested triplets. The original composition culminates in the last bars in Unodezimolen, so played eleven marks on a beat. In the later versions of Zappa takes on the notes of the melody and rhythmic groups them new. The piece appeared on eight different albums Zappa.