Frankly speaking about guitars

One of the reasons people want to become guitar players is that they think there's more to it than there
actually is. When I first started, I was very enthusiastic about the improvisational possibilities offered by
the instrument, but this has been dampened somewhat by the fact that, in order to engage in the type of
improvisational escapades that seem natural to me, I must be accompanied by a 'specialized' rhythm
section.
A soloist choosing to work in this odd style ultimately winds up as a hostage -- he can go only as far into
the 'experimental zones' as his rhythm section will allow him to go. The problem lies in the polyrhythms.
The chances of finding a drummer, a bass player and a keyboard player who can conceive of those
polyrhythms -- let alone identify them fast enough to play a complementary figure on the moment, are not
good. (The grand prize goes to Vinnie Colaiuta, the drummer for the band in 1978 and '79.)
It's hard to explain to a rhythm section during rehearsal what to do if I'm playing seventeen in the space of
fourteen (or Monday and Tuesday in the space of Wednesday). I can't specify in advance everything that
ought to happen in the accompaniment when the shit hits the fan in the middle of a solo.
Either a drummer will play steady time, in which case my line will wander all over his time, or he will
hear the polyrhythms and play inside them, implying the basic pulse for most rock drummers,
accustomed as they are to life in the petrified forest of boom-boom-BAP.
Jazz drummers can't do it either, because they tend to play flexible time. Polyrhythms are interesting only
in reference to a steady, metronomic beat (implied or actual) -- otherwise you're wallowing in rubato.
Just as in diatonic harmony, when upper partials are added to a chord, it becomes tenser, and more
demanding of a resolution -- the more the rhythm of a line rubs against the implied basic time, the
more 'statistical tension' is generated.

The Real Frank Zappa Book
by Frank Zappa
with Peter Occhiogrosso