Holdsworth - Nuages solo transcription

[Christian Miller]

A transcription of this bad boy

Here
Nauges (Allan Holdsworth solo).pdf

May I just point out what a pain this was to write out lol. Allan's rhythms are natural seeming and conversational but surprisingly hard to write down.

The fingerings are my very best educated guesswork. There's some slurs missing. Assume it's slurred if it's slurrable unless it's staccato (a few notes are.)

So far I've been learning to play this since around last October, so around five months so far. It's coming. Not ready yet.

This will form the basis of some videos.

[James W]

This will form the basis of some videos.

Looking forward to these.

[ragman1]

I absolutely hate that version. It's got absolutely nothing to do with Nuages except at the end where the tune appears, sort of. It may as well be Allan's Symphony in X flat.

That said, it would be an interesting exercise to find out how he gets those interesting notes, even if it was repetitive. No doubt some useful ideas there.

[Christian Miller]

I absolutely hate that version. It's got absolutely nothing to do with Nuages except at the end where the tune appears, sort of. It may as well be Allan's Symphony in X flat.

That said, it would be an interesting exercise to find out how he gets those interesting notes, even if it was repetitive. No doubt some useful ideas there.

Took me a few listens to hear it in fact

The first bit is a free time reharmonisation of the melody
Then solos on pretty much the vanilla changes
Then a straight statement of the melody with a more conventional harmonisation.

So apart from the intro it’s actually pretty straight laced. I mean you don’t have a rhythm guitar, but aside from that…

The 80s synthaxe sounds are a little upsetting I’ll grant ye haha. But the solo is gorgeous.

I chose the solo because it’s a rare example of Allan playing over standard changes. As opposed to going to Mars on his own already weird tunes.


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[GuyBoden]

Excellent, this is the solo from about 44sec to 3min.

Well done, that must have took a lot of repeated listening.

I'll have to study it closely.

[ragman1]

Took me a few listens to hear it in fact

The first bit is a free time reharmonisation of the melody
Then solos on pretty much the vanilla changes
Then a straight statement of the melody with a more conventional harmonisation.

So apart from the intro it’s actually pretty straight laced. I mean you don’t have a rhythm guitar, but aside from that…

The 80s synthaxe sounds are a little upsetting I’ll grant ye haha. But the solo is gorgeous.

I chose the solo because it’s a rare example of Allan playing over standard changes. As opposed to going to Mars on his own already weird tunes.


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OK, but, to be honest, I don't really want to have to listen to it repetitively till I 'get it'. If I want to hear a nice version of Nuages, lovely tune, I want to actually hear it. I'm sure if you took a casual listener and played a random section in the middle somewhere they wouldn't know what they were listening to.

I did notice that at some point the changes were very vanilla, just unaltered major chords, presumably so his legato runs didn't clash, probably. And I agree, it is pretty gorgeous... but is it Nuages? Or have they kind of hijacked the tune as an excuse to let Allan make his sounds?

You brought up the idea of 'respecting the music' and all that before. Can we honestly say they're playing the song or respecting the music? Not that I belong to that rather intolerant traditional jazz-police camp, thank god, but it does come to mind with this one. I feel the tune has just been used, if that makes sense.

I don't mind the synth sounds, by the way. That's okay, it's not hard to listen to.

But, as I said, those particular sounds over the changes are interesting. You can play, for example, the wholetone/augmented scale over a major chord. That's quite interesting (F wholetone over FM7) and it's not an unattractive altered sound. In the same way, he's getting certain effects by some means. From what I know, he makes his own scales, I think.

To distil the essence of that so one can use it oneself would be worth the trouble of transcribing it. But I'm quite certain that he won't be breaking any rules of music, generally speaking, because it simply wouldn't work if he did. So I'm not that overawed by it all... yet :-)

[Christian Miller]

Excellent, this is the solo from about 44sec to 3min.

Well done, that must have took a lot of repeated listening.

I'll have to study it closely.

The hardest bit was that run near the end with the repeated false fingering notes. I’m not certain that it’s 100% accurate. It’s close though.

But the transcription is I believe more accurate than the one that I found on Scribd.


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[GuyBoden]

OK, but, to be honest, I don't really want to have to listen to it repetitively till I 'get it'. If I want to hear a nice version of Nuages, lovely tune, I want to actually hear it. I'm sure if you took a casual listener and played a random section in the middle somewhere they wouldn't know what they were listening to.

I did notice that at some point the changes were very vanilla, just unaltered major chords, presumably so his legato runs didn't clash, probably. And I agree, it is pretty gorgeous... but is it Nuages? Or have they kind of hijacked the tune as an excuse to let Allan make his sounds?

You brought up the idea of 'respecting the music' and all that before. Can we honestly say they're playing the song or respecting the music? Not that I belong to that rather intolerant traditional jazz-police camp, thank god, but it does come to mind with this one. I feel the tune has just been used, if that makes sense.

I don't mind the synth sounds, by the way. That's okay, it's not hard to listen to.

But, as I said, those particular sounds over the changes are interesting. You can play, for example, the wholetone/augmented scale over a major chord. That's quite interesting (F wholetone over FM7) and it's not an unattractive altered sound. In the same way, he's getting certain effects by some means. From what I know, he makes his own scales, I think.

To distil the essence of that so one can use it oneself would be worth the trouble of transcribing it. But I'm quite certain that he won't be breaking any rules of music, generally speaking, because it simply wouldn't work if he did. So I'm not that overawed by it all (yet) :-)

Allan Holdsworth grew up listening to Django records, his Dad was a good pianist with lots of Jazz records, so he'd have known Nuages very well.

Edit, found some info:
Devil Take the Hindmost, The Otherworldly Music of Allan Holdsworth: 21: With a Heart in My Song, None Too Soon

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and re-harmonized the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing."

[ragman1]

Allan Holdsworth grew up listening to Django records, his Dad was a good pianist with lots of Jazz records, so he'd have known Nuages very well.

Edit, found some info:
Devil Take the Hindmost, The Otherworldly Music of Allan Holdsworth: 21: With a Heart in My Song, None Too Soon

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and re-harmonized the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing."

Understood, but no point in getting emotional, it doesn't change anything. At least he admits he couldn't do it 'properly' and reharmed the middle bit. Well, forgive me if I crow a bit, but that's exactly the point, isn't it? He did it 'his way' and it basically wasn't Nuages any more. Game over, let's be honest.

But what I'm really interested in, to repeat it, is the effects of certain notes on certain harmonies, i.e. what he plays over what. I suppose I ought to take it apart myself. It's the sort of thing one wants to do with Metheny and Sco's stuff.

Always looking for interesting notes, see?

[Christian Miller]

OK, but, to be honest, I don't really want to have to listen to it repetitively till I 'get it'. If I want to hear a nice version of Nuages, lovely tune, I want to actually hear it. I'm sure if you took a casual listener and played a random section in the middle somewhere they wouldn't know what they were listening to.

I did notice that at some point the changes were very vanilla, just unaltered major chords, presumably so his legato runs didn't clash, probably. And I agree, it is pretty gorgeous... but is it Nuages? Or have they kind of hijacked the tune as an excuse to let Allan make his sounds?

You brought up the idea of 'respecting the music' and all that before. Can we honestly say they're playing the song or respecting the music? Not that I belong to that rather intolerant traditional jazz-police camp, thank god, but it does come to mind with this one. I feel the tune has just been used, if that makes sense.

I don't mind the synth sounds, by the way. That's okay, it's not hard to listen to.

But, as I said, those particular sounds over the changes are interesting. You can play, for example, the wholetone/augmented scale over a major chord. That's quite interesting (F wholetone over FM7) and it's not an unattractive altered sound. In the same way, he's getting certain effects by some means. From what I know, he makes his own scales, I think.

To distil the essence of that so one can use it oneself would be worth the trouble of transcribing it. But I'm quite certain that he won't be breaking any rules of music, generally speaking, because it simply wouldn't work if he did. So I'm not that overawed by it all... yet :-)

Meh. It’s a fairly straightforward reading of the tune with a slightly usual intro. Not stating the melody at the start with the normal chords is thing that makes it less recognisable, but it’s clear by the end. Kind of like the clouds clearing at the end?

Allan’s harmonic choices in the solo aren’t that out there either. In fact for a bit of fun I’m wondering if I can play the solo with a more conventional jazz guitar tone.

As far as respecting the tune goes, he plays the changes and melody pretty exact to the original. He grew up listening to Django’s music. I don’t mind hearing a reinvention. He’s not half arsed it from a crappy Real Book chart with the wrong changes which is what I had an issue with.

You might not like it, and fair enough, but I wouldn’t say he’s disrespecting Django or the tune lol. (In fact I would have been ok with him taking more liberties with it.)


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[CliffR]

It sounded very much in the spirit of the tune to me.

Nice work on the transcription, Christian!

[Christian Miller]

Understood, but no point in getting emotional, it doesn't change anything. At least he admits he couldn't do it 'properly' and reharmed the middle bit. Well, forgive me if I crow a bit, but that's exactly the point, isn't it? He did it 'his way' and it basically wasn't Nuages any more. Game over, let's be honest.

But what I'm really interested in, to repeat it, is the effects of certain notes on certain harmonies, i.e. what he plays over what. I suppose I ought to take it apart myself. It's the sort of thing one wants to do with Metheny and Sco's stuff.

Always looking for interesting notes, see?

Emotional? Guy’s post seems to have been a fairly dry statement of fact. Perhaps you can point to what you found emotional about it.

In any case I would say you enjoy an emotional response, no? Be honest now ;-)


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[Christian Miller]

Allan Holdsworth grew up listening to Django records, his Dad was a good pianist with lots of Jazz records, so he'd have known Nuages very well.

Edit, found some info:
Devil Take the Hindmost, The Otherworldly Music of Allan Holdsworth: 21: With a Heart in My Song, None Too Soon

"What I wanted to do was my own rendition of something Django had done, rather than try to do something in a way that he might have done it, which I couldn't do anyway. For the introduction I just took and re-harmonized the middle section. Then we just played over the sequence and the melody actually comes at the end. Django was always one of my main inspirations when I was younger. My dad used to have lots of Django records and I thought he was absolutely amazing."

Yeah that’s right the intro melody starts from the B section. Nice quote. I didn’t think to Google it. Looks like a cool book.


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[Christian Miller]

But what I'm really interested in, to repeat it, is the effects of certain notes on certain harmonies, i.e. what he plays over what. I suppose I ought to take it apart myself. It's the sort of thing one wants to do with Metheny and Sco's stuff.

Always looking for interesting notes, see?

Well tbf that’s what I was after too. The main thing of got from this is how Allan uses the diminished scale which he plays a LOT.


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[pamosmusic]

If you took a casual listener and played the middle of anyone playing anything, I’m not sure they’d be able to identify the song.

[mr. beaumont]

46 seconds to about 4 minutes, fantastic. And you can absolutely, 100% hear Nuages in that. It's a beautiful take.

The synth stuff is not for me, especially when the keys player switches from piano to the "Disney ballad" setting.

[GuyBoden]

If you took a casual listener and played the middle of anyone playing anything, I’m not sure they’d be able to identify the song.

True.

Here's a bit of background about the "None Too Soon" album.

Interview with Allan Holdsworth about the "None Too Soon" album.
Allan Holdsworth (1996) | Richard Hallebeek | Guitar, music, guitarmusic
Why did you choose to play only Jazz standards on your new album?

"I have heard people say to me for years and years that they want to steal what I’m doing but they don’t understand the music! On one hand I take that as a compliment, on the other they might think that maybe I don’t know what I’m doing. In essence, my music is the same as Jazz, we improvise over chord changes.It’s just that it ends up sounding different, because of the way it was composed or maybe because I’m an idiot, I don’t know. Piano player Gordon Beck once suggested that I should do an album with more well known tunes so people can hear what I sound like over these tunes. It’s easier to hear in standards because the harmonic structure is easier to understand for people who have listened and played this kind of music before. But I don’t play bebop, I just do what I always do, how strange that sometimes may sound in this context. The other good reason for this choice is that I haven’t written enough original material to fill an album"


"I definitely didn’t want to do any of my own tunes this time. That way nobody could say ” He wrote that just to make it easy to play over for him’. It’s really the opposite. I find almost all the stuff I compose really hard to play over. I have written songs that were so hard to improvise over, I could almost cry. When I write a song, I think about the harmonies and which direction I want to take the song. "

[Jimmy Smith]

I agree that the tune wasn't recognizable. I was hoping to hear Allan interpret the melody better. But that's ok. Christian explained that he chose the tune to transcribe to hear Allan solo over more standard chords.

About the harmony of his lines. Yes, rag, Allan invented his own language of chromatic and altered, yet functional harmony for his lines. If you read Christian's transcription, he included notes on what scales are being used. His sense of altered/chromatic harmony for his lines is incredible and unprecedented since probably Monk. Almost every phrase is not derived from a vanilla scale, they're all altered scales. And some unusual ones too. He was a very theoretical player. Deriving his melody shapes from pure theory. Not many lyrical ideas. He used interval sequences a lot. In addition to his note choices, his sense of time feel was incredible.

Intro on his scales. He says there are plenty more.

[Christian Miller]

46 seconds to about 4 minutes, fantastic. And you can absolutely, 100% hear Nuages in that. It's a beautiful take.

The synth stuff is not for me, especially when the keys player switches from piano to the "Disney ballad" setting.

My thoughts exactly.

Gordon Beck is underrated too I feel. One of the first jazz musicians I heard in person in fact. His playing on the album Seven Steps to Evans (with Kenny Wheeler and Stan Sulzmann) is among my favourite of his. Great record.


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[GuyBoden]

I agree that the tune wasn't recognizable. I was hoping to hear Allan interpret the melody better. But that's ok. Christian explained that he chose the tune to transcribe to hear Allan solo over more standard chords.

About the harmony of his lines. Yes, rag, Allan invented his own language of chromatic and altered, yet functional harmony for his lines. Almost every phrase is not derived from a vanilla scale, they're all altered scales. And some unusual ones too. He was a very theoretical player. Deriving his melody shapes from pure theory. Not many lyrical ideas. He used interval sequences a lot. In addition to his note choices, his sense of time feel was incredible.

Intro on his scales. He says there are plenty more.

Personally, I don't think Allan Holdsworth invented his "own language of chromatic and altered, yet functional harmony for his lines." He just had different names (symbols) for well known scales.

[Jimmy Smith]

I think it's obvious that he did. There are outside players and there are inside players. And then there is Holdsworth who is in a class of his own. The harmony of his lines is never noise, yet it is never vanilla/inside/functioning normally either. Noone else in history has done that to that degree. The fact that the explanation is a simple one: he used a boat load of altered scales, doesn't make his work any less unprecedented.

[GuyBoden]

I think it's obvious that he did. There are outside players and there are inside players. And then there is Holdsworth who is in a class of his own. The harmony of his lines is never noise, yet it is never vanilla/inside/functioning normally either. Noone else in history has done that to that degree. The fact that the explanation is a simple one: he used a boat load of altered scales, doesn't make his work any less unprecedented.

I'm a Allan Holdsworth fan, believe what ever you want, I prefer the myth too.

But, the scales in the in 1992 Allan Holdsworth REH video you linked are these:

[Jimmy Smith]

So? His scales being widely available doesn't mean his chromatic/altered line harmony approach wasn't unique to him. And it was.

[Christian Miller]

Well it’s all there in black and white for you to analyse…. (And I’ve put some analysis in there too at a few spots.)

This solo follows the changes pretty faithfully, interestingly. The most outside bit is what he plays on D7 Db7 D7 at the end of the first half of the changes. No idea what’s going on there. Sounds great tho….

I'm hearing
Bbm7 Eb7 - Bb melodic minor
Am7b5 D7b9 - C diminished or C melodic minor
G - G ionian/G bebop added note
Bbo7 - Bb diminished
Em7b5 - C ionian
B7b9 - C diminished
Em7 - E minor pentatonic/dorian
A7#11 - E melodic minor
etc

He pretty much plays the sort of stuff he talks about in the video. He's pretty Scalic. He makes it interesting by jumping around imaginatively, and playing really interesting phrases, but the majority of the notes come from these fairly standard chord scales.

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[pamosmusic]

I think it's obvious that he did. There are outside players and there are inside players. And then there is Holdsworth who is in a class of his own. The harmony of his lines is never noise, yet it is never vanilla/inside/functioning normally either. Noone else in history has done that to that degree. The fact that the explanation is a simple one: he used a boat load of altered scales, doesn't make his work any less unprecedented.

This is one of those things that old school Stephen Colbert would’ve called “truthy.”

It feels true and appeals to something we get intuitively so we don’t really check up on it and just kind of proceed as if it were true.

When I look into guys I think of as being super out and complex, I’m pretty routinely surprised by how simple the tools they’re using are. Often the same stuff we use, just applied super creatively.

Christian’s recent tangent on Adam Rogers strikes me as an example of this. It’s so out but it’s just like ….. major scales in places a simpleton like me would never think to put them.

I’m not a holdsworth head but a buddy of mine is in it deep and talks about him the same way. He always talks about how often he uses simple structures in creative ways, and things that feel like he probably arrived at them for the fingerings, but that result in super out sounds.