Thoughts on the "Trout Mask Replica" guitar project

During the pandemic, between September 2020 and April 2021, I learned all the guitar parts from Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica and posted videos of myself playing them on YouTube. It happened the way a lot of things happen: from a surfeit of time. 

I'd had the tab transcription of the Lick My Decals Off, Baby instrumental "Peon" that Ron Geida did for me for about 20 years, but never got around to learning it. So during April 2020, while my wife was working from home via Zoom, I sat down in front of the music stand in our sunroom and very laboriously read through it. When I got to where I was able to play through the whole piece, I shot a shitty camera video of it, as if to say, "I did this!"

(I say I'm an illiterate blues-rock guitarist, but that's not totally accurate. I took violin for three years as a kid -- well, I carried the case to school for three years, anyway -- and can remember EGBDF and FACE from treble clef; I'm hopeless on note values.)

After playing through "Peon" obsessively for a few days, it occurred to me while I was running that Elliot Ingber's guitar solo in "Alice in Blunderland" (the instrumental from The Spotlight Kid, the first Beefheart I responded to from the first record of his I owned) was made up of short phrases that I might learn in a similar way. So I sat down, listened to it a bit at a time, and made some notes. I wasn't ready to attempt to notate anything. Soon enough, I was able to play through it, and shot another video. 

Trout Mask Replica was a more daunting challenge. When I was first exposed to it, at college in 1975, I couldn't hear a lot of the music, and not just because of the mix on the album, which emphasized Don Van Vliet's voice and saxophone (but conveniently for my purposes had the two guitars hard-panned left and right). My knowledge of music theory and harmony was non-existent. I learned to play by stealing licks off of records with a pretty rudimentary harmonic palette. (Many years later, I tried jamming a blues with a jazz guitarist of my acquaintance and felt like a five-year-old trying to have a conversation with an adult.)

But over the last few years, while involved in an ongoing task that required attention and listening, I'd inadvertently developed my ability to hear music. Also, years of playing in bands had sharpened my ability to hear the intervals between notes, which I could identify (so I could tell, for example, that the interval between a major third and a seventh is the same as that between a tonic and a flat fifth). So I started out trying to transcribe some songs from Trout Mask Replica.

As I mentioned before, the guitars on the album are hard-panned, with Bill Harkleroad always on the left, Jeff Cotton always on the right. My first step was to make reference recordings of each channel on my phone (using the video camera; there might be a way to record audio alone, but I'm too techno-illiterate to fathom it). 

Then I'd listen to each and make a transcription using non-standard notation, based on positions on the neck. I'd write down the range of strings and the position, the notes in sequence, with markings to indicate high or low (if more than one instance of the note appeared in the range) and rough indicators of duration and emphasis. 

I decided I would shoot videos to use as a visual reference to go with the transcriptions when I inevitably forgot the pieces. I've used them to recall pieces I've forgotten and validated that I'm able to use them for that purpose. Unlike the musicians on the record, I didn't commit the songs to memory; in most of the videos, I'm reading from my charts. Typically it'd take me a day or two to make the transcription, another couple of days to learn the piece well enough to record one part on my looper and play the other part over it.

At first, I was posting my YouTube videos on a Facebook fan page for John "Drumbo" French, the Magic Band drummer and Trout Mask transcriber-arranger, who gave me feedback on one of my transcriptions (he rated my accuracy at 85%; Denny Walley, whom I'd seen on the Bongo Fury tour and twice with Beefheart, also told me the correct tuning for "Moonlight On Vermont"). After a few months, I left the group when a troll harassed me. Particularly before the election, my nerves were on edge, and I find fan culture -- based on one-upmanship and proximity to the object of fandom -- to be fairly toxic.

I'd started out using Nick Girgenti's Strat for the videos, but Drumbo (whose book Beefheart: Through the Eyes of Magic was invaluable for providing the social context in which this music was created) was insistent that heavy strings were necessary to be able to hear the definition of the parts properly. As I didn't want to have to buy the two additional springs for the Strat's tremelo, I decided to restring Jon Frum's Epiphone with .013-.056s (which I'd last used in Colorado, winter of '79-'80) and use it instead. For the last few songs, the Epi was supplanted by a Harmony Silvertone 1478 -- same model as my very first electric guitar, which I broke before I could really play -- also strung with .013-.056s, that I bought online for a good price at Nick Didkovsky's urging after having spent years searching for one.

While waiting for strings (in the time when postal service slowed due the pre-election machinations of Trump's postmaster general Louis DeJoy), I shot one video using my beater acoustic, then after I had the new strings on, I re-did the videos for the pieces I'd previously done using the Strat. The heavier strings took some getting used to, but soon I was re-acclimated to them and found I could do pretty much anything on them that I could with lighter strings, except for bending the G a whole step. I'd also started hybrid picking with a flatpick and two metal fingerpicks like the Magic Band guitarists, and discovered that the fingerpicks were hell on wound G strings. I sent off for a dozen replacements, because I found that I broke one every few weeks.

In late September, my social media buddy Jeff Economy (filmmaker and original cinematographer on the MC5: A True Testimonial documentary) pulled my coat that a guy out in California was doing a podcast wherein he planned to discuss Trout Mask Replica in detail, devoting an episode to each song, and suggested I contact him. And that's how I came to know Joel Bakker, whose feedback on the TMR guitar project proved to be invaluable and motivating. (I'm in his "Sweet Sweet Bulbs" and "Dali's Car" episodes.) Ken Duvall, whom I looked up to as a teen around the time he actually got to audition for Beefheart twice while living in Boston, was also a source of great feedback and encouragement. Reunion Magic Band guitarist Eric Klerks' videos were a big help getting started, and his online guided meditations have helped improve my focus, sensory clarity, and equanimity. High On Fire bassist Jeff Matz and YouTube viewers Alexander Gedeon and Lucas Siccardi provided useful feedback.

Here are some brief impressions of the songs, in the order in which I learned them.

My Human Gets Me Blues -- One of the most fun to play. Opens with Fmaj7. I like the way the guitars switch parts early in the piece.

Steal Softly Through Snow -- Another fun one to play. A lot of phrases that shift and move quickly.

Sweet Sweet Bulbs -- A kinder, gentler Beefheart. Loosely synced bluesy lines flow into a moment of temporal dislocation before rejoining.

Frownland -- In standard tuning; both guitars use slide. The first "hardest thing" I learned. This was the first time I realized the existence of "touchpoints" -- those moments in a seemingly chaotic piece where things sync up. The high single-note stuff in the Harkleroad part is daunting. The first time I played through it over the looper and the parts synced, it blew my mind.

Bill's Corpse -- The first instance of notes I thought I'd been hearing on the record for years not showing up in the transcription. An example of the "third note" one can hear when there's dissonance.

Moonlight On Vermont -- Guitar #1 in open G with a capo at the 9th fret (thanks, Denny!). A "greatest hit." Gimme that old time religion.

Hair Pie -- Much hidden detail underneath some of the album's most recognizable riffs.

Veterans Day Poppy -- Guitar #2 uses slide with the high E dropped to D. It's interesting how the parts that are most audible on the record alternate between the two guitars. And the division of labor between the two guitars on the long Amaj7 coda.

Ella Guru -- Guitar #2 uses slide in dropped D. There's a menacing undertone beneath the cheery melody. I dig the "laughing" slide line.

Hobo Chang Ba -- Both guitars use slide; Guitar #1 is in dropped D. Delta blues extrapolations chug along like a freight train.

Dachau Blues -- Incongruously upbeat given the lyrics' subject matter. Jarring dissonance, counterpoint, and a surprising alternating bass figure. A case where I found the technique to play something I really don't know how to.

Old Fart At Play -- Guitar #2 uses slide in standard tuning. Bluesy riffage under the more prominent slide part. 

Fallin' Ditch -- Guitar #2 plays slide in dropped D. One of the simplest constructions. The bass plays the main melody, which is why I shot a video of that part. Perhaps I'll do more if Andre Edmonson lets me borrow his bass again.

Sugar 'N Spikes -- Both guitars play slide in standard tuning. Ambles along amiably in almost cartoon-like fashion.

Wild Life -- Oddly swinging funereal blues.

Dali's Car -- Dissonant contrapuntal etude. Inspired by a sculpture of a car overgrown by plants, and it really sounds like unruly life overtaking technology.

She's Too Much For My Mirror -- Mood shifts from nervous to leisurely to intense.

Neon Meate Dream Of A Octafish -- One of the most complicated pieces, most of which is inaudible on the record due to the prominence in the mix of Don's vocal, sax, and a phasing effect. Lines rush by like bustling city traffic. 

Pena -- Dense, bordering on chaotic due to the prominence in the mix of Cotton's vocal and Don's screams. This took longer to transcribe and learn than any other TMR song. The most frustrating moment in the project.

Pachuco Cadaver -- The rockin'-est number on the album. The Cotton part really has all the action. (It was interesting to note French's characterization of Cotton as the "feel" guy, Harkleroad as the "detail" guy.) The closing "Shortnin' Bread" section sounds pretty flat without Drumbo's traps.

Ant Man Bee -- Guitar #1 plays slide in standard tuning. Variations on a syncopated line over shifting chords. While trying to play the Harkleroad part, I erased my loop and had to re-record it not once, not twice, but three times. The second most frustrating moment.

When Big Joan Sets Up -- Guitar #1 plays slide in standard tuning. Rather than try to replicate the stops and starts of the album version, I just did an abbreviated version of the form to wind up.

Some general observations: 1) The mystique behind this music is justified, I think, and the musicians' accomplishment insufficiently recognized. It's a shame that so much of their work was buried in both the album's mix and Don Van Vliet's statements to the press that star-struck journos accepted as gospel. Drumbo says his original transcriptions were destroyed after Don's passing. In a perfect world, some music school library would be reaching out to him for his musical archives. 2) I was surprised I had the technique to play all of this, but then, the Magic Band musicians came from the same sort of blues-rock background I did, with a little more grounding in country blues. (Perhaps that's why Eugene Robinson from the band Oxbow told Joel Bakker that his guitarist, a Zappa fan, perceived there was "nothing happening" guitar wise with the Magic Band.) 3) Much of the music is more tonal than I expected, with the perceived dissonance coming from contrasting tonalities in the parts or certain recurring tropes like the tonic-flat fifth interval I referred to earlier. 4) I'm a little incredulous I was able to do this. Now that this project is done, I'm going to miss it. Learning these songs over the past six months gave me a sense of purpose I valued. While on a certain level I miss the physical abandon of playing loud with other people in front of an audience, it is gratifying to know that I can find satisfaction playing by myself at home, at a volume that doesn't disturb the cat.