Frank Zappa was an unremitting musical innovator and experimenter, always looking for ways to exploit the latest advances in technology. His working life coincided with the explosive development of music technology that ran from the 1960s through the following three decades.

Without such inventions as the Marshall amplifier, the Gibson SG, the wah-wah pedal, and the Synclavier - much of it modified to his requirements and used in ways for which they had never been designed - Zappa's air sculp...