The new millennium has spawned a wealth of writings about the music of Frank Zappa. Some of it has particularly focussed his “serious” music. In this paper, which draws on findings from my 1999 doctoral dissertation, I add to this literature by pointing out two central stylistic traits in Zappa’s oeuvre: the pasticheand the guitar derivate. Locating these traits to different levels of compositional material – figure, form, tonal system – enables a critical perspective on Zappa’s work-aesthetics that went under the cryptic name of project/object. It may also explain the xenochoral(disparate spaces) effects of Zappa’s xenochrony.