The Black Page Part 1 & 2 - Frank Zappa - UNT percussion recital

***I do not have a copy of the sheet music. It was handwritten and remains in the UNT library, so please don't ask for it. And there definitely are not any Tabs that I know of! If you want the bass parts I transcribed, I could email them to you if you ask me in a private message.*** This piece was recorded in the Spring of 2003 in the University of North Texas Recital Hall, as the finale for my Junior percussion recital. It is one of the most technically challenging things I've learned on the drum set (I'm playing the set on the left), and the mallet part was nuts too, so there are lots of ragged parts during the faster rhythms. We only had a week or two to put it together, so I think we did pretty great considering the difficulty and genius of Zappa's work. Part 1 is an exact transcription that Im playing on the drum set, but Part 2 is mostly improv, in the style of how Terry Bozzio played it. Our percussion professor, Christopher Deane, originally approached us with this piece by Frank Zappa for our percussion ensemble class. To be fair on deciding who would play Terry Bozzio's part on the drumset, he made it an audition. Dave Bergman and I were both totally even, close to nailing it, so he wasn't sure who to pick. Eventually the class playing it fell through, but I had worked so hard on the part, I asked people if they would play it on my Junior percussion recital. Then I thought about Dave working so hard on it as well, and we had the cool idea to have him play a "percussion drum set", to mimic the percussionists that Frank Zappa used on the original. The history of the piece is told in Frank Zappa's words in between the 2 versions, but basically it started as a drum solo for Terry Bozzio, then Zappa added a melody that all the instruments played except for the bassline. The first version had insane rhythms (lots of triplets, 5-lets, 7's, 9's, and even 11's) , so he made a 2nd, "easier" version that was more straight ahead. Mr. Deane had a photocopied, faded, hand-written transcription of the drum set part and the melody. Nobody knows who transcribed it, since it had been passed around for years, but my hat goes off to whoever it was, especially since they probably used a record player to do it. I transcribed the bassline from recordings, and we threw it together as a group in a week or so. A very mind-expanding piece of music to play. Sean Redman - drum set David Bergman - "percussion" drum set & marimba Craig Butterfield - electric bass Prof. Christopher Deane - conductor, speaker, and vibes Patricia Islas - marimba Mike Hodges - xylophone Nate Werth - vibes Brian McGee - marimba Ben Schultz synthesizer

Added 1 Jun 2026