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Speed-freak boogie : “Speed-freak boogie“ is an instrumental track with only guitars. It can be found on “The mystery disc“ as a recording from 1962. Zappa plays the lead guitar and rhythm guitar, while Doug Moon gets credited for a second acoustic rhythm guitar. This must be the bass line then. It's in E Dorian; in bars 2-3 of the example the lead guitar is for a moment playing chromatically. The first example is the opening of this piece with the bass line getting identically repeated. The second example is from the middle of the song. Now you've got four parts. The bass has started varying its theme. The lead guitar is getting really high. Seen the range of this lead guitar in both examples it's most likely that Zappa doubled the frequency of staff 1, but not the speed. When you play the second example an octave lower, it gets normal, but when you would turn down the speed to half as fast too, it becomes unnaturally slow. Probably Zappa turned up the speed to a degree. The bass line goes normal. The third “normalized“ midi file below has staffs 1 and 3 of the second example an octave lower and the speed of the whole brought back to 85 % of CD version. Speed-freak boogie, opening (midi file). Speed-freak boogie, section (midi file). Speed-freak boogie, modified section (midi file). Speed-freak boogie, sections. On “The mystery disc“ it gets described as “an example of multiple overdubs and half-speed recording, circa 1962. F.Z. sped-up lead and rhythm guitar, Doug Moon, rhythm acoustic guitar“. I know too little of recording techniques to tell how exactly “Speed-freak boogie“ got into being.
