Allan Holdsworth’s game was simply astounding. He had access to an immensely sophisticated harmonic, rhythmic and melodic vocabulary steeped in jazz tradition and also assimilated elements of rock, fusion, funk, blues and even classical harmony, but the end result was unmistakably the his.
Allan was indeed a special artist, with a unique approach to music and one of the most recognizable guitar sounds of the late 60s until his passing on April 15, 2017.
Born in 1946 in Bradford, Yorkshire, it is well known that Holdsworth never really wanted to play the guitar, preferring the sound of the saxophone, but when practical considerations prevented him (his parents had no afford to buy one!), he turned his attention to the guitar, albeit without the intrinsic connection to the idiomatic vocabulary of that instrument.
Holdsworth’s father was an accomplished pianist and encouraged him to practice, but with remarkable discipline and focus, Allan set about learning to play entirely on his own.
Although influenced by the music around him and by listening to various artists from his father’s record collection, such as legendary tenor saxophonist John Coltrane and French classical composer Claude Debussy, Allan launched himself with an unwavering determination to sound entirely like him. He has therefore developed a very personal approach to musical creation, with both improvisation and harmony at the heart of his sound and style.
Allan’s career began in the top 40 cover bands, before working with progressive/jazz crossover bands such as Tempest, Igginbottom’s Wrench and Gong, then touring and recording with artists such as Soft Machine, Jean -Luc Ponty, Bill Bruford. and Tony Williams.
With a flair for composition, this naturally led Holdsworth to develop an impressive career as a bandleader in his own right, with each new release eagerly awaited by his international legion of devoted fans, with live performances reaching high status. almost mythical.
I urge you to take the time to listen to his playing if you are unfamiliar with his music, first to bask in the sheer beauty, but second to allow the realization of the possibilities available, if you strive to achieve that level of fluidity, sophistication and articulation.
The purpose of this article is twofold: to highlight the genius of Allan and to introduce his music to all those who do not know it. Second, we’ll explore how you can take specific concepts, for our purposes here we’re looking at five in all, and apply those ideas to your own game.
We’ll do this by first looking at a concept derived from Allan’s playing, then explore how the same idea has been exploited in more classic blues and jazz styles, including a host of well-known players of these two idioms. .
Although learning these lines will definitely broaden your harmonic, melodic, and rhythmic horizons, you should then consider inventing your own ideas that take each concept or idea and work with it.
The end result can be as close or as far from the initial inspiration. What’s important is that you explore the possibilities of this process, and I’m sure Allan would agree. As always, enjoy…
Technical focus: Choose your influences carefully
While it is undeniable that Allan Holdsworth achieved a unique and instantly recognizable voice as a musician, guitarist, composer and improviser, there were two names he consistently recognized as having a profound impact on his musicianship and artistry. .
These were French composer Claude Debussy, and specifically the piece Clair De Lune from the Suite Bergamasque, as well as jazz saxophonist John Coltrane, again specifically highlighting the album The sound of Coltrane (Atlantic 1960) as being of particular importance.
Think about how you could incorporate the ideas of the musicians who inspire you. While it may be a specific musical idea, concept, or approach, it’s equally valid to try to adopt a similar mindset.
Although there may not be an obvious connection between the two, you can clearly hear both of these influences in Allan’s music. Debussy’s beautiful, impressionistic harmonic movement coupled with Coltrane’s rhythmic density and melodic intensity present in Holdsworth’s sound comes into its own once you understand the significance listening to this music had on Allan, assimilating the essence but never sounding like a pale imitation of the source.
Think about how you could incorporate the ideas of the musicians who inspire you. While it may be a specific musical idea, concept or approach, it is equally valid to try to adopt a state of mind, feeling or other relevant artistic expression. and try to incorporate it into your sound.
Get the tone
Amp Settings: Gain 7, Bass 6, Middle 5, Treble 5, Reverb
The fluidity of Holdsworth’s tone was partly the product of his precise legato technique; too much distortion negatively affects the dynamics and changes the sound of the vowel of a sustained note. Its clean sound was super clean, with modulation, reverb and several delays.
Our virtual guitar amp’s settings mirror its lead settings, although gain levels will vary depending on your pickups’ output and your amp/simulator’s gain structure.
Example 1. Oblique movement
Our first example introduces the concept of oblique motion, where an event remains static while motion occurs in neighboring notes.
For our Allan-inspired idea, there is a consistent C note for each chord voice, while the surrounding voices generally move in parallel, either in stepwise scalar motion or in one-fret jumps. half tone. Bars 2 and 3 are of particular interest here because they describe how Holdsworth often treats simple major and minor triads.
Keeping the C note static, we see how Eric Clapton might interpret the ideas of early blues players like Robert Johnson, and again keeping C as our static pivot point, we see a similar idea expressed by the gypsy jazz guitarist Biréli Lagrène to create a perfect intro or outro in the key of C.
Example 2. Parallel movement
Next, we explore parallel motion in our chord shapes. Holdsworth often created voicings by combining stacks of specific intervals from a particular host scale. He viewed them from the parent scale, rather than identifying each shape as a single chord or harmonic event.
Here we see how he could harmonize the Dorian D mode (or Dx, using Allan’s chord symbol system), using an interval pattern of 7ths, 2nds, and 6ths from bottom to top. Again, we see similar expressions of this idea from blues master Robben Ford and soul, blues and jazz sensation Cornell Dupree.
You can hear a similar harmonizing device employed in the tenor/alto/trumpet section of Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Julian Adderley on their famous album, kind of blue.
Example 3. Chromatic decoration
Allan was exceptionally good at bridging the gaps between chord tones and the less stable dissonances that lie tucked away in the cracks between them. Our first line here describes B Dorian on E (Bx/E).
Rhythmic intent, as well as the selection of an ultimate strong resolution, plays a big role in the success of lines of this nature. Resist the temptation to rush, as it will seem much less convincing.
As with the previous examples, we explore this concept of chromatic decoration from a blues and jazz perspective by examining lines inspired by Jimi Hendrix and Jimmie Rainey respectively.
Example 4. Exterior lines
This line is harmonically ambiguous from the start, with clear evidence of major thirds (A) and even a chromatically approximated F7b5b9 arpeggio (FA-Cb-Eb-Gb). Holdsworth was clearly comfortable with harmonic ambiguity and enjoyed combining ideas with major and minor thirds, as well as major and flattened 7ths.
We expand on these outer ideas with a Gary Moore-inspired pentatonic pattern that moves in and out of key via rising and falling semitones, and we end this example by illustrating how Pat Metheny moves in and out of key by moving small pieces of a phrase in semitones to create a propulsive feeling of tension and release – an important device in both jazz and blues.
Example 5. Mixing Rhythms
Holdsworth’s sense of time was wonderfully fluid and he mixed rhythmic groupings frequently, completely spontaneously and undoubtedly without a care in the world.
If you’re new to quintuplets (five notes per beat), you might want to use some words to help you out here, so bar 1 could be interpreted rhythmically as “college-2nd&a-college-4th&a”.
Our Eric Johnson pentatonic phrase swings between triplets (three notes per beat), sixteenths/sixteenths (four), and quintuplets (five) to produce a sense of developing intensity. Adrien Moignard’s final phrase mixes these rhythmic units again but like our Holdsworth line, it swings freely between these subdivisions at will.
