ZAPPA THE COMPOSER: Mixing musical meters and styles

Frank Zappa always seemed determined to push boundaries, and musical boundaries are less than exception - to him, it seemed that music was only good as far as it could be experimented with.

Zappa often changed meter within a song, a technique that he used on quite a few tracks; for example "Oh! No", from the Ahead of Their Time album.  "Igor's Boogie, Phase 1" from Burnt Weeny Sandwich is also an example of odd meter/polyrhythm - it moves from 4/4/ to 3/8 to 7/8, and keeps changing meter until the piece ends.

Zappa was also not a genre musician. He believed that music was music, and thus could be found anywhere.  He loved so many genres of music: for example, he had a particular soft spot for the R&B of his teenage days, and that 'shuffle' style of meter (1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3 - almost like a waltz) that was the basis of doo-wop and 1950's, 1960's R&B.  He loved combining it with rock n roll, jazz, musique concrete, all the while maintaining classical progressions - he was a composer, after all.