# Holdsworth



## mishabasi (Jan 3, 2013)

So i'm a HUGE fan of Allan Holdsworth's playing style. I'm trying to learn how he does it but it's too much to digest in one sitting. I was wondering if any of you have pursued his style and how you got there. I feel like i need to take baby steps because i can't just study scales all day. I just want to learn more about his phrasing soo i can work it in with my own style and make it my own. I've already got some basic ideas but it sounds so juvenile. Any suggestions?


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## shadowlife (Jan 3, 2013)

His instructional video is a great start to understand how he thinks about chords and scales.
After that, it would be a matter of transcribing things that you really dig, and figuring out what they are, so you can use them.

Good luck trying to attain anywhere near his level of technique.


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## celticelk (Jan 3, 2013)

You can also try to get your hands on a copy of his instructional book *Reaching for the Uncommon Chord* - check with your local library to see if they can locate a copy for you.


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## InfinityCollision (Jan 3, 2013)

Learn to play saxophone.

Only half joking, his playing is basically bringing saxophone phrasing to guitar. Studying the great jazz saxophonists and their phrasing would be very helpful in mimicking his style.

Also, be patient. You could easily spend years on this.


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## Xiphos68 (Jan 3, 2013)

You can learn his technique. It is a very difficult task but don't doubt yourself.

Tymon posted this about learning legato in general (he's really good at it).



> The best piece of advice I ever got on legato and which worked miracles for me is this:
> 
> Practice over a simple backing track or metronome and keep playing straight 4ths, 8ths or 16th notes, nonstop. No rests, no rhythmic deviations, just completely straight.
> 
> ...



Holdsworth vid on Chords:


Good luck man!


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## Trespass (Jan 4, 2013)

Learn how to place chord tones on downbeats.
Look up approach notes, chord tones and "exercises" on google.

That's pretty much it. Everything afterward is what you outline harmonically, what outlines you choose. This is definitely something hard to convey in text, but if we were speaking in person with a video of Holdsworth playing, I could point out to you what each phrase is outlining and how he's outlining it.

If your downbeats don't produce some kind of coherent phrase, you will not get the organization Holdsworth and jazz players have in their lines.


The language is actually really, really simple. Most people (Holdsworth, universities included) just aren't able to teach it. The same is true with bebop. I could teach 13-14 year old kids bebop, if they were so inclined to learn it.


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## ChronicConsumer (Jan 4, 2013)

InfinityCollision said:


> Only half joking, his playing is basically bringing saxophone phrasing to guitar. Studying the great jazz saxophonists and their phrasing would be very helpful in mimicking his style.






Trespass said:


> Learn how to place chord tones on downbeats.
> Look up approach notes, chord tones and "exercises" on google.




Bingo. To my knowledge, the vast majority of what Holdsworth does is based around following chord tones. Because these chords change quite frequently, this can lead to some very interesting changes.
Just listen (and watch!) this video for a minute. I have no factual evidence, but I'm fairly sure Holdsworth was influenced by mister John Coltrane.



Now, I understand that the melody and chord changes are far too quick for the average human brain to understand, but if you look closely, you'll see that essentially, whenever Coltrane changes chords, he changes his melody too. This example is a bit over the top (that's actually why I chose it - it is so extreme that it's easy to see that the melody changes almost every chord), but I hope this helps illustrate the concept of using chord tones: in music like this, where there is a lot of key changing going on, it is nigh impossible to stick to a single key (for example, the key of Bb). This is why, instead, musicians change their scales and arpeggios in correspondence with the chords in the background!

Hope this was of some use to you. As for the actual playing part.. take it slow, keep at it, do the best you can and try not to get frustrated. Keep in mind that this is perhaps _the_ skill that made Holdsworth famous among guitarists.

*edit: I somehow wrote Charlie Parker instead of John Coltrane. Forgive me, I've fixed the mistake now!*


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## Trespass (Jan 4, 2013)

Giant Steps is by Coltrane.

Look at any down beat in that Giant Steps video, then check if that note is part of the chord. Guarenteed it will be 99% of the time, or a common alternative [It's common to play 4ths and 9ths rather than 3rds as downbeats over m7th since around the 60s

There are phrases Coltrane plays. Those phrases follow the harmonic progression. That's pretty much it.


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## guitareben (Jan 4, 2013)

Another little thing to add, find out Holdsworths influences, then transcribe some of their stuff (they'll be saxophonists or trumpet/horn players ^^). And don't just go for the notes, try and get the smooth legato sound they have ^^ 

Anyway, doesn't Holdsworth do legato by only using hammer on's? As in, he'll hammer on notes to descend scales too?


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## ShadyDavey (Jan 4, 2013)

Regardless what people think of Marshall, here's some licks directly lifted from Holdsworth as a basis for your studies.



Enjoy mate


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## pawel (Jan 4, 2013)

I am a big Holdsworth fan as well, although I am a complete jazz beginner and I am nowhere close to even 1% of his technique. I think the basics (basics of improvisation over chord changes, listen to Coltrane, legato) are covered above, but even if you mastered these, you'd still be missing some important ingredients. 

On the technique side, mastering the hammer-on only technique will get you most of the way there, but the other thing is to even out the hammer-on and pick attack, meaning picking very lightly and generally trying to divert the listener's attention away form the picked notes, for instance by not picking the accented notes/downbeats.

Regarding the phrasing, of course playing over changes is the key thing, but Holdsworth does have a very unique language on the guitar that even some of the best jazz guitarists out there admire and can't fully replicate (I recall an interview with Kurt Rosenwinkel saying something to this extent). That said, there are some ways of getting at least a bit of that feel without having Allan's brain. One thing is the wide intervals - if you watch Allan's videos you can see the wide stretches he does. That's not to say that you need to be able to do it, but being able to get these intervals into your lines in some way (by tapping etc.) is a part of the sound. The other thing, at least to my untrained ear, is the way he mixes the wide intervals with very narrow intervals/chromaticism. My way of getting some of that feel is to try and connect faster phrases with slower connecting chromatic ones where you are moving things in half steps. If you are able to comfortably play over changes and be able to throw these and other bits of the language in, you'd be going quite far towards copping the Holdsworth thing.

Finally, there is the tone as well, which is also what makes the legato thing really work. You do need the gain to be able to get the hammer-ons and hammer-offs heard, while at the same time you need to be able to keep most of the fuzziness at bay. These days, with all the modellers around this is probably the simplest part of the equation, although there are still many out there chasing that tone.


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## ChronicConsumer (Jan 4, 2013)

Trespass said:


> Giant Steps is by Coltrane.



Absolutely right. Don't know why I made that mistake, I bet it's because I'm not very functional in the morning ^^

Indeed he does only use hammer-ons for legato (no pull-offs), that Marshall guy's video definitely helped me a bit, though to be quite frank, I don't think he really explains what he is doing too much. Seems to be a bit of a show off to me, but then again, his chops are pretty insane.


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## Overtone (Jan 4, 2013)

Cybernetic implants
The time machine from Bill and Ted so you can time warp, practice your butt off and come back
Lager


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## Indigenous (Jan 4, 2013)

I would start by learning as much jazz vocabulary as you could. Learn a bunch of tunes, then learn outlines and bebop lines you can take through the chord changes. Make variations on your lines til you have a decent bit of jazz vocabulary under your fingers that you are comfortable with. At that point, I would start transcribing solos by Holdsworth. This will help you because a) it's incredibly good for your ears, and b) you will be able to figure out exactly what Holdsworth is doing over the chord changes. Once you understand what he is doing and can replicate it, I think his style will be more clear and much more attainable. 

I would stress that you cannot just dive into Holdsworth solos if you have no jazz experience. If you do, fantastic! Go transcribe some Holdsworth. If not, I would definitely take it in small baby steps like you said, and build up your vocabulary over time. I find that learning jazz helps me in ALL areas of music, and not just jazz, so it's definitely a worthwhile endeavour. Good luck!


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## Xiphos68 (Jan 5, 2013)

ShadyDavey said:


> Regardless what people think of Marshall, here's some licks directly lifted from Holdsworth as a basis for your studies.
> 
> 
> 
> Enjoy mate




That first lick is a steal! 

Really cool! 

Dave, you are the man!


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## forshagesan (Jan 7, 2013)

2nd one too!


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## bondmorkret (Feb 2, 2013)

Everyone should be a huge fan of Holdsworth! I've transcribed loads of his solos


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## ArtDecade (Feb 11, 2013)

bondmorkret said:


> Everyone should be a huge fan of Holdsworth! I've transcribed loads of his solos



My hands are not even close to big enough to play a majority of his phrasings! Good on, ya!


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## Francis978 (Feb 18, 2013)

In some of his soloing/phrasing, he seems to enjoy the triton hexatonic scale

This scale is pretty much made when you combine major triads a triton apart from each other

So say I am in A (A major triad A C# E), Eb = the tritonem (Eb major triad Eb G Bb) 
So put these two triads together and play each from lowest to highest, and you will get: A Bb C# Eb E G. 
He likes messing around with these kind of scales and combining triads.

Good luck on the Holdsworth stuff! These guys here already gave you a lot to go with


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## celticelk (Feb 18, 2013)

Francis978 said:


> In some of his soloing/phrasing, he seems to enjoy the triton hexatonic scale
> 
> This scale is pretty much made when you combine major triads a triton apart from each other
> 
> ...



That's an interesting way to derive altered-Lydian sounds. Basically you're using Lydian dominant with a b2 - the scale degrees in this hexatonic collection are 1 b2 3 #4 5 b7. You could also think of it as a subset of half-whole diminished: 1 b2 b3 3 #4 5 6 b7. Thinking of it as two major triads, though, will tend to suggest different sequences and phrasing than if you use one of these pitch collections in a "scalar" mindset.


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## Trespass (Feb 18, 2013)

Vol. 7 Hexatonics | Jerry Bergonzi

Amazon.com: Intervallic Improvisation: The Modern Sound: Walt Weiskopf: Everything Else

Coltrane's Crescent period is pretty much all triad pairs.


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## Francis978 (Feb 18, 2013)

celticelk said:


> That's an interesting way to derive altered-Lydian sounds. Basically you're using Lydian dominant with a b2 - the scale degrees in this hexatonic collection are 1 b2 3 #4 5 b7. You could also think of it as a subset of half-whole diminished: 1 b2 b3 3 #4 5 6 b7. Thinking of it as two major triads, though, will tend to suggest different sequences and phrasing than if you use one of these pitch collections in a "scalar" mindset.


 
I was referring it to be more of a double scale or a "partial scale".
In an article by Wolf Marshall, Holdsworth himself described it in a similar fashion that I did, except he used C and F#. 

"Allan explained this concept as the combining of two triad components with different roots(ex: C major and F# major) to form a third scale having characteristics of both."

I see what you are saying, but I'm just saying where I got my information from


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