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I don’t remember seeing a thread on this
Magnum Opus. It is over 5 hours long (!) but there’s a lot here that’s fascinating. It’s really good. Also, no ads, which is a mercy!
The guy doing the analysis is I think more from a shred/instrumental rock/prog background but I do think a thorough analysis of how Allan mechanically operated the guitar ends up being surprisingly relevant to his improvisational langauge
one theme that comes up again and again is how Allan effectively used the ‘bugs’ of the guitar and standard tuning as features. This led to a language that was very rooted in the possibilities of the guitar while at the same time sounding like no other guitar player.
As as I see it every great jazz guitarist has found a way to work with the instrument rather seeking to overcome it.
Anyway I can see aspects of the transcribed examples that are not discussed in the video such as Allan’s phrasing, articulation and so on. There’s an awful lot I could discuss here from a jazz perspective too.
And he doesn’t even touch Allan’s chordal vocabulary.
It’s crazy I could easily imagine another two or three videos of this length just to cover the basics elements of his style.
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08-26-2022 05:37 AM
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... this is as I suspected, having listened to his playing a great deal as well as looking at transcriptions: idiomatic albeit unique playing (and unique despite and because of the idiomatic-ness).
Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I saw this video posted a while back but I admit I procrastinated watching it!
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Originally Posted by Christian Miller
His mechanics really are a huge part of what he plays. I like to think of it as his "math". By that I mean the way he takes the three finger combinations he tends to use most, and turn them into fours, or sixes, using different physical patterns. Then moves those patterns around. To the dismay of my wife, I’ve listened to a fair amount of his stuff on half speed, to "ingest" it. And once you can hear those physical patterns, you notice them everywhere.
A lot of the time, he is thinking physically, rather than "what note goes here".
And yes, to the creator, it’s a huge amount of work. Much thanks.
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I saw this a while back, some prog-metalhead (i.e. metallers who think they are too cool to listen to metallica) made an hour long video about Allan Holdsworth transcriptions only to say things like "He mostly uses the major scale!" and "It's like he plays dissonant notes only to resolve it", like it is some incredible realization or something , and then ends it by saying that his synthaxe noise was edited in post or just made that way. His entire channel is dedicated to transcribing Holdsworth licks and voicings, so I guess you can commend the effort, if nicking Holdsworth licks note for note is your thing.
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that’s a a little unfair. Originally Posted by Wensleydale
I mean, it’s five hours.
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Not sure if anyone here follows the AH Archives on facebook, but they brought to my attention this:
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=...xAOpkZyiMacc3Q
... a new Allan Holdsworth album, comprising the audio of the Live at Yoshi's DVD along with some previously unreleased live performances.
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Allan Holdsworth decoded. Amazing research and presentation by Brent. Music Lessons | Brett Stine Music
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Well having worked through my first Allan solo I would say that this video was invaluable. Also most of the transcriptions out there SUCK.
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What's with the question mark - they should have used a full stop instead.
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1:00 mark, this is the greatest guitar solo ever recorded.
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I'd be hard-pressed to agree that this was the best Allan Holdsworth solo, let alone the best guitar solo ever recorded.
I think possibly the best short rock guitar solo ever recorded was Hendrix's "All Along the Watchtower" solo. Probably the best jazz solos ever recorded were on "Smoking at the Half Note." Another particular favorite of mine, which I think is an extremely well structured and paced solo, was the studio recording of "Phase Dance" by Pat Metheny.
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I've been a fan of Holdsworth's playing ever since discovering Tony Williams' Believe It and UK's eponymous debut and the Gong and Jean-Luc Ponty albums he played on, all in my freshman year in college (so, 1978) and to this day I am enthralled, engaged, and impressed by nearly everything I hear him do. Just listening to his playing it is evident that he approaches the instrument uniquely, with a melodic/harmonic vocabulary quite his own Originally Posted by vintagelove
...but with the advent of youtube videos in the past decade or two, I've come to appreciate -- and be both fascinated and flabbergasted by -- Holdworth's physical approach to the guitar. Because he rarely seems to take the easiest or most obvious path to connect any given note to the following note, and often he moves in completely counterintuitive directions on the fingerboard.
One of my favorite inscrutable techniques of his (which he appears to use quite frequently) is playing a passage that descends melodically/registrally yet moves up the neck (i.e., closer to the body, away from the nut)...and/or vice-versa...or that goes in one direction melodically/registrally yet moves in the opposite direction in terms of higher-to-lower (or lower-to-higher) strings! How -- or why -- he would even think to do that, much less then be able to spontaneously execute that, baffles me to no end!
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It's bonkers. It also makes him a LOT of fun/no fun at all* to transcribe. It becomes an exercise in trying to think like him, which is to say not anything like any other guitarist that I know of including all the widdly internet fusion guys who he influenced.
*delete according to your personality
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wow - i didn't know i could find music this unbearable
i bet he puts his 'lines' together by writing down formulae and then applying them to the fretboard
are there guitarists out there who have spent time working out AH solos AND charlie parker solos?
loads of notes in quick succession - and featuring mechanical repeated patterns - is good for what? i really don't know - it certainly sounds awful
rock guitar - especially rock guitar with loads of notes in quick succession - is like anti-jazz.
so it would make sense to do it if you really hated e.g. Sarah Vaughan and Bill Evans....and you wanted to make a big thing of really hating them.
taxi for groyniad....
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People said/say the same thing about John Coltrane. Originally Posted by Groyniad
Like Coltrane, Allan is capable of being extremely lyrical too.
I find the thing that turns me off to Allan is usually the tones and timbres in the band. Just the 70s/80s synth tones and stuff. But the music is pretty wild.
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If you don't like Holdsworth, which is a matter of taste of course, try the albums "None Too Soon" and "Sixteen Men of Tain."
Coltrane was a huge, huge influence on Holdsworth and I think he extended the "sheets of sound" concept about as far as it can go. He also learned music from his father (or grandfather? Reports vary as his biography seems a little unreliable), who was a pianist. So his grounding on the instrument is not very guitaristic. He apparently slaved over the Slonimsky book and did put together a series of scales mathematically, keeping some and rejecting others.
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Originally Posted by Groyniad
This has to be one of most clueles posts I've ever seen on a music message board. Alan Pasqua and Gordon Beck as well were incredible pianists who came out of Bill Evans and were both huge champions of Allan Holdsworth and worked with him repeatedly over their careers.
Tony Williams, Miles Davis, George Benson, Mike Brecker, Dave Liebman, Vic Juris...the list of amazing straight ahead players 'in the tradition' who absolutely venerated Holdsworth is endless. Joe Diorio used to talk about Allan in glowing words he didn't use for anyone else, as did Mick Goodrick.
Of course, anyone with ears could hear how singularly amazing Allan but the fact that all these heavyweights raved about him should give those with tin ears pause. Benson was so impressed with Allan's playing that he personally intervened to get Allan signed to CTI records. Miles and Chick Corea both sought out Allan to play with them. Liebman and Brecker both caught Allan live at a festival they played at and marvelled to each other about how brilliant Allan was:
"Somewhere in the late 90's at the Eilat Red Sea Festival (Israel) I was backstage listening to Alan Holdsworth playing, sitting with Mike Brecker about to do our set on another stage. It was Allan’s trio with Gary Husband (drums) and Skuli (bass). I remember looking at Michael after a few minutes and saying: “Do you have any idea what they are playing?” We were completely baffled!! Alan was a true original, one of a kind. My condolences to the family and to the fans who loved him so much."
I have known Liebman for years. Never did he speak about another improvisor the way he did about Allan and Lieb himself wrote the book on modern jazz harmony and played with everyone from Miles, Elvin and Wayne to the latest cats.
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I think - rather feel - as a pure musician Allan was one of the greats. If he’d never played a fast lick in his life he’d still have been one of the greats.
It’s notable how many non guitarists dig him.
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As I understand it Allan was raised by his grandfather who he believed to be his father. Originally Posted by Cunamara
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Yeah I mean, this is a normal thing with a lot of modern music. Coltrane was very into mathematical formulae and using elaborate artificial means of finding musical ideas. It rules. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
I think he just gets forgiven because when he chooses to be lyrical it's something like Ballads or his "In a Sentimental Mood", which just sounds -- in terms of timbres and tones -- like what conservative jazz goobers expect from jazz. Holdsworth can also be really beautiful, but the presentation of the music feels more like you'd get from Return to Forever or 80s fusion music, which conservative jazz goobers don't like anyway.
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You had me at "conservative jazz goobers" !
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Thanks for mentioning that, I had made a note to myself to give that approach some practice time but forgot all about it. I had noticed that certain scale sets/patterns lay out on the fretboard in an unconventional way, this became apparent while reading through Slonimsky's book. Originally Posted by Bob_Ross
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Yeah I mean if I'm going to be talking about my own personal tastes, I don't massively like any of the way of his albums are produced. Someone can me correct me if I'm wrong, but I gather there was a lot of overdubbing of various players over the years for budgetary reasons so they often weren't in the same room (Allan was a pioneer in this respect). I don't know if None To Soon was recorded that way, but it kind of feels like it might have been, which is a shame for the more standards album. I would have loved to hear him more with a band in the room with a more organic recording. Nearest thing to that is Sixteen Men. No standards though. Originally Posted by pamosmusic
I've been listening a lot to Proto-Cosmos though, live album. It's great, the Alan Pasqua band, which I saw live on that tour, but the acoustic at the venue was pants and the sound guy didn't have a Scooby Doo, Allan still sounded incredible of course. Allan is a touch RAW on this, I love it. Pasqua's on Rhodes a lot, which I enjoy. I still find Chad's playing a bit crashy bashy on the cymbals, but Allan obviously liked him!
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This is why we let you keep coming back here, Christian. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
(though I have no idea what this means)
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