-
So Allan is coming to my school in two weeks with Chad Wackerman and Ernest Tibbs.
I think it's good to make a list of questions before you meet a jazz legend, it can be very enlighting. But with Allan it's a little harder. Some of the questions i've thought of are:
*What do you think when playing outside?
*How did you get your incredibly good timing?
I'd like to have some suggestions of other jazz guitarist'. Also, what would you ask Chad and Ernest?I'll share the answers in this topic.Last edited by Charlie Christian; 07-13-2014 at 03:32 PM.
-
07-13-2014 03:10 PM
-
Just don't let Eddie Van Halen knock you down. When I was at GIT Holdsworth came to play and do a seminar. Van Halen just shows up and is shadowing Holdsworth everywhere. Holdsworth was in town for a few days to play a club and supposedly Van Halen followed him everywhere. Stories have it Holdsworth got to point of asking people not to let EVH know where he was going.
Ernest Tibbs is my old bass teacher and a great bass player he is a amazing Jazz soloist. You definitely what to check Ernest out.
-
" How good was Ollie Halsall?
-
A few years back he was talking about getting out of music (or at least performing) since he had a hard time making ends meet. Has his outlook changed since then?
-
CC:
Originally Posted by Charlie Christian
I'd recommend you ask different questions, at least the first one. "playing outside" is a mostly meaningless expression which typically means playing stuff the listener doesn't yet understand, and I doubt Holdsworth thinks of his playing as being outside. Also, most improvisers aren't thinking when they improvise. I suspect what you are trying to get at is to have him explain how he organizes harmonic/melodic information.
You might check out some of the instruction/youtube videos of him explaining his ideas, and then you could ask him to clarify some of what he says. eg.
-
I would love to know what he thinks of Tim Miller?
I would also ask if he has ever considered doing an album of standards or duets, like a duet with a sax player or something.
-
He's limited in his education. I would not want to embarrass him. He doesn't really know chords as we understand chords. He's created his own language but this makes it hard to work with other people who don't know how you work. He's not the kind player where you call tunes or put up a chord chart. I'd want to know about his influences. How he developed his unique approach. Does he consider himself and jazz or advanced rock musician or do labels not interest or offend him?
-
Don't get me wrong. He's the most incredible and creative guitarist. He's just one of these geniuses who decided to reinvent the wheel
-
We're all looking forward to some new material!
-
Richb - he doesn't swing at all doesn't also necessarily mean his time sucks. He has a different conception of time from swing or groove in that way. He is not a funk player. You could say his biggest "fault" is an inability to play blues, but he's not a blues player. I think he said he'd shoot himself if he ever started playing blues licks. But not playing blues or swinging is as much a part of style as swinging or bluesing is a part if what makes up a style.
-
If his time actually does suck I missed it, which might be possible. Maybe point out where he plays out of time or can't play in time.
-
Sorry but it happened. EVH is a huge Holdsworth fan. Originally Posted by Richb
-
I remember reading in an Allan Holdsworth interview how upset he was with EVH, and later an interview with EVH. Not following him around like a puppy dog, but being obsessed maybe. EVH was getting him that record deal and AH just wanted to be left alone. Suddenly there was management and record execs. Not what AH wanted at all. That's why he only gave them an ep instead of a full length recording. AH walked away. That's the one with Tokyo Dreams, or something.
-
Road Games.
-
Ask Chad if he's been back to Seal Beach recently.
-
In terms of early influences, Holdsworth learned to play a bunch of Charlie Christian solos note for note when he first started out (which surprised me a bit when I read that). Also, he liked Jimmy Raney's playing and really dug Oliver Nelson's arrangements. Holdsworth's father was an amateur/semi-pro jazz pianist, so Allan grew up listening to a lot of jazz.
But yeah, he's got his own idiosyncratic system for harmony/melody, so all that earlier jazz he liked was probably influential more by osmosis - not literal like analysing ii V licks and what not.
-
Yrs, I know about the Christian solos and his father. But it's always good to ask. Might get a new take. It might be a good opener. He also loved Coltrane and tried to get horn lines.
-
\ Originally Posted by henryrobinett
BS, Henry! What arrogance! criticising other peoples playing just because he's not embracing archaic concepts and chooses to live 21st century!!...L..Last edited by MarkRhodes; 07-14-2014 at 04:23 PM. Reason: Language
-
ask him if he ever eats food?
I saw him in Boston order 4 pints of Guinness and SLAM 3 of them in less than a minute during a break, it was actually a little scary.....Chad Wackerman told me he rarely eats on the road.... I also talked to Allan during that break and made sure I DID NOT HIM ASK ANY DUMB MUSIC/GUITAR QUESTIONS...probably the last thing he wants to hear in that setting.
-
What the hell are you talking about?? Sorry for not quoting the source, but I was talking to and responding to richb who said Holdsworth time sucked. Don't yell at me. Yell at him. I was saying it didn't. He is the one who said Holdsworth can't swing, not me. Originally Posted by larry graves
-
As I said BS!..I never mentioned the word swing, did I? The only person yelling here is you, must have touched a nerve..What you did say was, "He's limited in his education, I wouldn't want to embarrass him, He doesn't really understand chords as we understand chords" (who's we?) Out of order....... Originally Posted by henryrobinett
Last edited by MarkRhodes; 07-14-2014 at 04:23 PM. Reason: Language
-
Innerviews: Allan Holdsworth - Harnessing momentum
notably:-
"How do you go about capturing ideas during your writing process?
Ten years ago, I used to record things when I improvised. I’d put on the recorder and start playing and if I found something interesting, I’d go back and listen and think “Oh yeah, I can work with that.” Sometimes, I’ve gone the way of not recording anything at all. It can sometimes be about how I feel at that point in time, and I just scribble the music down and keep going back to it until I can put it into shape. Sometimes things come really fast and some things take months. Take “Sphere of Innocence” from Wardenclyffe Tower. I wrote the whole tune in a couple of hours but there was a modulation in the middle of it that resolved in a way I wasn’t happy about. Ninety-nine percent of the piece was done in less than a day and it took months to finish the other one percent.
When you write music down, are you using standard notation?
No, I have my own system that I use and only I can figure out what it means. [laughs] It’s based in intervallic permutations. If I think of a chord, I see the scale it comes from and just write that down. If it’s a specific chord which the head of a tune is based on, I write down the actual dots to show me where my fingers go.
Do you read or write conventional music?
No.
That’s hard to believe.
I started out learning to read because my father was a great piano player who read very well. He always encouraged me to read and I did when I started playing clarinet in my youth. I found it relatively easy to read while playing the clarinet because most of the time there was only one place where a note would exist most of the time. With the guitar, it was totally confusing because you have a lot of choices in terms of where you can play a note. So, my dad caught me a few times when I just memorized note placements. He’d give me new things and I’d screw them up and he knew I wasn’t reading. Eventually, I didn’t bother with it anymore."
So as usual, the true story lies somewhere in the middle and there's no need for getting angry with people.
-
Ahem....
I would venture to say that maybe someone owes somebody at least a partial apology....
-
I saw Ollie Halsall with his band Patto on numerous occasions when I lived in London in the early 1970s. He was an amazing guitar player, particularly compared with his contemporaries on the rock scene at the time, and he played vibes to boot. To top it off, I saw Halsall and Holdsworth playing together in the same band, a prog group called Tempest, at Queen Elizabeth Hall in London in 1973. There were a lot extremely fast lines bouncing around the hall during that performance.
Of course, there are similarities in Ollie's and Allan's legato styles, and the one time I met Allan - at one of his shows in Washington DC in the mid-80s - when I mentioned to him that I had seen him with Ollie in Tempest in 1973, he seemed a bit defensive, insisting that he hadn't copied Ollie, even though I didn't say or imply that he had. Still, in the end, there is no comparison between the two. Ollie was a great rock player with jazz tendencies who might have moved in a more fusion direction had he not tragically died prematurely (drug-related, alas). But Holdsworth went way, way beyond him -- conceptually, harmonically, etc.
And, IMHO, to call EVH, as great as he is, "as much of a genius" as Holdsworth is laughable. Just my opinion: anyone is free to disagree, and no offense intended.
As for Holdworth's alleged inability to "play the blues," while it is true I've never heard him playing Muddy Waters or Howlin' Wolf licks per se, check out the solo on the video below, from 2:49 to 3:24 (and do listen to the rest as well):
Last edited by jbernstein91; 07-15-2014 at 01:55 PM.
-
Wow. I'm not yelling at all. He is limited in his education. He doesn't know how chords are spelled. Sorry. I know Flim Johnsons wife, who comes from my city. He played with Allan Holdsworth for many years. He had to look at his fingerings and write charts because Allan didn't know what the chords were. This is not unknown btw. This is not a criticism. If anything it's more admiration for his genius. As I said, he decided to reinvent the wheel. Originally Posted by larry graves
Chill man. I'm not yelling or angry. But you seem to be. I also don't know what nerve of mine you're talking about striking. But you know, it's hard to read accurately in ascii.
Reply With Quote
Has anyone tried the JHS Clover preamp pedal?
Yesterday, 05:41 PM in Guitar, Amps & Gizmos