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Not sure how to embed FB videos? I do YT videos all the time….
https://www.facebook.com/share/v/1FoCKZ1ufG/
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12-01-2025 03:26 PM
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Saw this earlier. Impressive.
I gather he's also an impressive fingerstyle player.
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You can't, it's a... feature to drive traffic to FB.
Originally Posted by ruger9
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Probably? He's not a pick player at all... several years ago he gave up using a pick and just plays with his fingers. Originally Posted by James W
Interestingly... he IS using a pick in those videos. But I haven't seen him use a pick in years.
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I found another vid of him on FB playing Coltrane's first chorus. Dude always had chops.
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^^^This. It's almost disingenuous to refer to Richie Kotzen as a "rock guy" ...he's a well-rounded musician capable of playing in a wide variety of styles, who was fortunate enough to gain some notoriety after he was signed to Shrapnel Records early on in his career, and he's played with some well-known rock bands. Originally Posted by mr. beaumont
But he's always had a harmonic vocabulary far more advanced -- and far more "jazz-adjacent" -- than your typical shredder.
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I don't regard it as a diss to call someone a rock player - or OTOH a compliment by itself to call someone a jazz player. Jazz has a higher bar to entry in terms of musical knowledge, but all music is hard to play to a high level. I thought I was playing the music when I was jamming on Heartbreaker at age 17, but it turns out there's a bit more to it haha. Originally Posted by Bob_Ross
Creative players take inspiration from other areas, and that's true whether you play rock or jazz. The skills of changes playing are transferable. All the good rock players played the song whether by intuition or design. Both rock and jazz are broad churches with many sub genres.
In a world where Joe Satriani took lessons with Lennie Tristano... maybe we stereotype rock players?
The 80s thing saw many rock players study at colleges with jazz teachers and so on. I'd say it was not unusual during the shred era, and quite customary for many modern players today.
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Jazz is a funny one in rock though.
Larry Carlton's solo on Kid Charlemagne is held up as a classic example of jazz rock fusion in the more mainstream rock context, and yet when you examine the solo, there's only really one stand out clear jazz lick - which is that F minor thing with the chromatic that he plays on Bb7.
The rest of it is mostly pentatonics, albeit used with a more intervallic sensibility and with more attention to the changes than you might have found in a contemporary blues based player - but not really jazz language per se.
But after decades of jazz, I don't hear music the same as most rock listeners or, presumably, players. So I listen to Larry and hear a classic rock solo, and a rock listener listens to the solo and hears that one lick, and it's enough to make it distinctively jazz. It stands out! If he'd played any more bop lines, he'd probably have lost the rock crowd of the time. It's like truffle oil.
And Larry can get around standards, but his legacy will always be in his super tasty playing on great rock albums. (Not exactly a hot take lol). So he's a rock player first and foremost.
I also think Larry is quite an important influence on the modern instrumental rock players. A lot of them sound to me like his sensibility with modern post-shred chops. I'm thinking of the Guthrie school mostly here. Smoother and less rock and roll in your face than EVH etc, with the odd bebop flourish here and there amidst the legato licks and so on. What I think of as Internet Good Guitar Playing.
Many rock listeners talk about jazz as if it's all chaos and experimentation, which is funny to me given how strict the study of jazz can be... I think the chromatics and syncopated phrasing sounds chaotic if you aren't used to it. When I first heard Bird, it sounded "atonal" to me. Now I think of it as more or less inside lol. Millions disagree!
And then you have players like Mike Stern who play endless bop lines with a rock sound, on the other side of the divide. Mike is definitely a jazz guitarist, I think most people would agree (aside from your absolute bop purists). And there are many guitarists from the past few decades who are definitely jazz guitarists who sound - tonally at least - nothing like the classic players, Kurt being merely the most obvious example.
OTOH I listen to Ritchie playing Giant Steps and I'm hearing pentatonic stuff applied to the changes - his style on the changes. He sounds like a rock guitarist to me. Which is not a slight. But to someone else he might well sound jazz.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-02-2025 at 06:05 AM.
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And to my ears............ Allan Holdsworth sounds like erm............. Allan Holdsworth.
It's neither Rock or Jazz or Jazz Fusion......................it's Allan Holdsworth.
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https://www.facebook.com/share/r/1KdjfgFhVV/ Originally Posted by ruger9
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I heard Allan Holdsworth in a small venue in Hollywood in the late 80's. He was so talented but exhausting to listen to, because his lines were so incredibly long and dense. Tremendous player. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
And to my ears............ Allan Holdsworth sounds like erm............. Allan Holdsworth.
It's neither Rock or Jazz or Jazz Fusion......................it's Allan Holdsworth.
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I agree...although I think the other musicians who played in Allan's bands tended to skew the music more towards "Jazz/Rock Fusion" than the compositions and/or Allan's playing per se. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
And to my ears............ Allan Holdsworth sounds like erm............. Allan Holdsworth.
It's neither Rock or Jazz or Jazz Fusion......................it's Allan Holdsworth.
I would love to have heard Allan do an album of his music with, for example, Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette... or Mark Dresser and Joey Baron... or Mike Formanek and Bobby Previte ...just for a few examples off the top of my head.
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Pretty obviously staged, but still really funny. Reminds me of my own wife when the girl starts mockingly mimicking the lines. Originally Posted by Hep To The Jive
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Allan sounds like jazz to me FWIW. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
And to my ears............ Allan Holdsworth sounds like erm............. Allan Holdsworth.
It's neither Rock or Jazz or Jazz Fusion......................it's Allan Holdsworth.
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Interesting. Do you ignore the rock elements then? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I mean I would describe him generally as jazz fusion. But I am sympathetic to the idea that Allan just sounded like Allan, given his uniqueness and distinctiveness.
I wonder if the judgement that something is jazz has more than a hint of value judgement about it...
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I don't really hear that many rock elements except on obvious tracks like Road Games, or when he's playing with an actual rock band? His own stuff seems to avoid the sort of structures and rhetoric you find in rock music, but it seems spiritually closer to the jazz of the 60s to me. A lot of it is very floaty and nebulous. Not many riffs really. The rhythm section is usually playing in a more jazz way. I mean to me stuff like City Nights is extremely jazz... Originally Posted by James W
There is jazz rock. Some of the stuff he did with Tony Williams, even.
Jazzers seem more sympathetic to his music OTW than rock fans.
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Interesting. Generally excepting a few records like None Too Soon or 16 Men his band is playing around a back beat - like a rock rhythm - rather than what I'd regard as a jazz swing rhythm. Plus he used a distorted tone and was interested in things like the synth axe. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I mean the drumming is rarely swing tbf. Originally Posted by James W
I don’t see him using a distorted tone as a rock thing. Allan seemed to be wanting to sound more like a horn or a sax than a rock guitar sound. I think you can hear this by the subtlety of his vibrato and note onset.
Allan joked he had to play blues licks sometimes for his band mates. But on the whole he’s kind of like the least rock and roll guitarist ever to play a distorted electric. Tbh I feel like Grant Green is more rock than him.
Obviously he bends notes - but again, it’s a weird one. When he does it like at the beginning of the solo on Road Games it can create a tremendous sense of tension. I adore that solo. But then there’s whole solos where he doesn’t really do it much.
Incidentally I would say that the lead guitarist from Meshuggah that the fans don’t like as much - Fredrik Thordendal - reminds me a lot of Allan in the way he uses practically no vibrato. It’s quite unusual.
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Yeah lots of jazz guitarists have mimicked horn players, it's true. Not denying the jazz aspects of Allan. But it seems to me a bit ridiculous to deny the general idiom he played in which had a definite rock aspect. Have you heard how he played Trane's 'Resolution' with Chad Wackerman et al? Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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I have. I saw him live twice BTW, including with that band. Originally Posted by James W
Sure, there's a rock aspect, I'm just not sure there's an overall rock sensibility to his music. It seems much more (dis)organised around a jazz approach, even where individual grooves and textures are ones we associate with rock rather than the acoustic jazz era.
In terms of mainline rock - he doesn't seem interested in riffy bombast that much - and while as I said he could lean into that on other people's records, I'm not convinced he was all that interested in rock music generally? He didn't seem to reference rock and roll players as an influence on him much in the way that players like Jeff Beck did. He's much more likely to talk about horn players, and jazz guitarists.
Eddie Van Halen tried to guide him into doing rock friendly stuff - it didn't really work out. EVH didn't really get where Allan was coming from artistically, and it created a bit of friction between them.
Of course he was a popular sideman for bands with a strong rock riff element, and I love him in those bands (especially the New Lifetime), but his own music didn't seem to lean that way.
Of course there's also prog rock - and many Allan fans are proggers - but even then I find Allan's stuff to not really fit. It's not buttoned up, worked out and orchestrated material. Mostly his tunes are vehicles for improvisation, and he never plays the same thing twice. Bearing mind of course prog rock in the 70s was a diverse category, but I can't find much in common with him and Yes, or ELP, or even King Crimson.
So - I find it hard to describe his music as jazz rock.. something with I have no trouble applying to Mahavishnu, say, who seemed to lean more into that sort of rock riffing and so on (they were much more commercially successful). Or Steely Dan, where the songs (the lyrics really) are the organising factor. Or even someone like Wayne Krantz (who disavowed the term fusion OTOH.)
Jazz fusion? Sure. I like "electric jazz". That term should be used more IMO.
I'm not saying you are wrong. I just don't hear him like that really.Last edited by Christian Miller; 12-04-2025 at 06:51 PM.
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Ok. There are discrepancies between Allan and (other) fusion... but if I were to list all the discrepancies between Allan and (other) jazz music that too would be quite a long post. I've already mentioned some... But tone and timbre are important musical facets, right? I mean I know it was Allan who pioneered such a virtuosic legato approach but it was people like Satriani and Vai who picked up on that more than any straight-ahead player. (As for Mahavishnu, sure but he otoh made more beboppy records than Allan. Allan was always Allan, McLaughlin more of a chameleon...) Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Allan's legato shredding was hugely influential on rock guitarists of course. Satriani took the sheets of sound legato scale thing from Believe It (Allan had consciously moved on from that by the 80s.) You could argue some of the stretch legato thing was repurposed by people like EVH and George Lynch as cool licks. Originally Posted by James W
Allan's playing in general? Not very influential on rock guitarists at all I'd say - in terms of the way he plays melodies and hears lines.
I do get the impression that Allan's lines are kind of hard for a lot of rock players to follow - they just hear them as a bunch of random notes. You can have someone play a 'crazy' lick for a bar or two in a metal solo, but that intense chromatic outside to inside thing that Allan does really is a jazz thing, and yes the points of reference will be stuff like John Coltrane and Joe Henderson.
That vey soft onset, subtle use of vibrato and whammy bar? No, I don't hear Allan's way of playing in Vai or Satch - actually quite the opposite. I mean they clearly love Allan - and being high level musicians and guitarists, no doubt they'd be able to mimic Allans' touch - but the music they play is more clearly instrumental rock, and needs a more in your face approach. Jimi and EVH are the templates for that - at least for their generation. (The Meshuggah guy is one exception I can think of. But everyone seems to prefer Per Nilson, who is more conventionally rock in his delivery.) I mean it's a bit circular, but rock sounds like rock in part because rock musicians do stylistically rock things when they play and sing melodies and so on.
As aside on that note it's interesting listening to this
Allan's influence on the mainline jazz guitar was delayed by a generation almost. But he has been a huge influence. Kurt is an obvious one. Many jazz players today seem to be highly influenced by Allan. Perhaps it's easier to hear the jazz in Allan in retrospect because it's no longer strange to hear distorted guitar in a contemporary jazz ensemble.
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You know going back to the OP - it seems to me that the difference to me between the rock and jazz approach to me is rock players play on the chords, whereas jazz players learn to play into them.
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