#Trout mask replica how to

Where some musicians would regard his writing style as nonsensical, for Vliet it was his source of genius. After a few days of vocal and horn overdubs, Trout Mask Replica was finished.

The band was so well rehearsed, they recorded most of the double album’s instrumental tracks within a single six-hour session. The album was produced by the legendary Frank Zappa, Vliet’s highschool friend. Vliet resorted to intimidation, manipulation, starvation, isolation, occasional violence and making the band rehearse for 12-14 hours a day to maintain control of them.Īfter the brutal eight months of abuse and constant practice, Vliet and The Magic Band entered the recording studio. These times were grueling for the Magic Band as they faced intense conditions. This kind of abuse was not uncommon to the Magic Band who, along with Vliet, wrote, rehearsed and partially recorded the album in a rental home in Woodland Hills, Cal. In the end, French chose to leave the group, which subsequently led to Vliet obscuring French’s name from Trout Mask ’s credits until later releases of the album. On one occasion, the two came to blows which ended in French being thrown down a flight of stairs. To organize the parts, since he could not read or write music, French painstakingly transcribed all of Vliet’s bizarre music so the band could learn the songs. On top of this, he paid no mind to consistent musical beats or steady tempos.

#Trout mask replica how to

This is due to Vliet writing the whole record, on a piano, an instrument he didn’t know how to play. Often during the songs in Trout Mask Replica, some or all of the musicians will be playing in different rhythms and keys simultaneously. The end result is more akin to Pablo Picasso than Paul McCartney. Vliet’s approach to music is more in line with the methods of a visual artist rather than a musical one, using the piano more like a slab of clay and the sound as it’s sculptures.

Besides the environment, these compositions were a product of musical ignorance. The songs of Trout Mask Replica eerily mimic the living conditions the music was birthed from: chaotic, strange and isolated. Different to what he knows? Yes, and that’s what he wants. Much like the listener who has listened to the first track of the album, Vliet is ready to harken in a new world. “My smile is stuck, I cannot go back to your frownland” Vliet declares amidst the cacophony. The bass of Mark Boston and the drums of John French chaotically roll under the song like an avalanche. When the two come together they create a bubbling ooze of indefinable sound. The song fills its first seconds with the sharp sounding dual lead guitars of Jeff Cotton and Bill Harkleroad.

Trout Mask Replica immediately thrusts you into its world with “Frownland”– the first track of the album. A lifetime painter and sculptor, Vliet never saw himself as a musician, and he definitely wasn’t one in the traditional sense. The creative mind behind Trout Mask Replica was Captain Beefhardt himself, AKA Don Van Vliet. With a runtime of 79 minutes and 28 tracks, this sprawling double album is a non-stop odyssey into the abstract and the angular. Trout Mask stretched, expanded and defied the rules of the genre previously set in place and somehow still breaks them today. To many, including myself, Trout Mask Replica, truly is the be-all-end-all in terms of rock music. Fifty years ago on June 16, 1969, Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band released their third album.