# Allan Holdsworthian Chord Progressions



## samu (Jun 21, 2011)

Well, where to start. Stuff like Devil Take the Hindmost or Home sound cool as hell but I'm pretty sure Allan is straying away from the orthdox I-II-III-IV etc. stuff. 

Can someone explain the voicings that he typically uses?


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## in-pursuit (Jun 21, 2011)

AH uses a lot of "quartal" voicings. or as a lot of purist theory wankers will say, they're just minor elevens. have you got your hands on any of the tabs for his tunes? he has a fairly healthy disregard for the concept of playing within a key, but generally any of the single chords he plays can be isolaed to at least one key signiature. I've got one of his tab books, pretty gnarly stuff but unfortunately the solos were ommitted from the transcriptions


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## ShadyDavey (Jun 21, 2011)

Close harmony and quartal harmony are two approaches, but this may explain a little more if you haven't seen it already:



Also worth looking at "Reaching for the Uncommon Chord" as a very specific transcription book which covers some very informative material.


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jun 21, 2011)

ShadyDavey said:


> Close harmony and quartal harmony are two approaches, but this may explain a little more if you haven't seen it already:




This is basically the second half of my commercial harmony 1 class.


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## Duelbart (Jun 21, 2011)

Commercial harmony? o.o


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## Mr. Big Noodles (Jun 21, 2011)

Duelbart said:


> Commercial harmony? o.o



Yep. It's mostly jazz harmony, reading leadsheet symbols, etc. The teacher cut his teeth on big band jazz in the 70's, so everything he did sounded like the opening of a cop show.









The whole "chord family" thing is basically making the largest chord you can out of a given scale, then picking and choosing chords within that chord to act as upper extensions over a bass note root, substitutions, etc. A little example using the scale of Bb lydian (made into a Bbmaj13(#11) chord):






And the second measure there could easily be triads, ninth chords, eleventh chords, clusters, quartal voicings, etc. It's just extended tonality.


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## niffnoff (Jun 21, 2011)

Great voicings. I likey.


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## Behaving_badly (Jun 21, 2011)

in-pursuit said:


> ... unfortunately the solos were ommitted from the transcriptions



the world isn't ready for such guitar mastery to be revealed yet...


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## Overtone (Jun 22, 2011)

Just having watched the video now I like his chord family idea. Even without going into big chord extensions he can bring some pretty strange scales into the picture. The example with minor/maj7 with a b5 or #4 however you wanna look at it... let's take that chord

(Forgive me if i used the wrong enharmonics anywhere)

Amin/Maj7b5 has A (r) C (m3) Eb (b5) G# (Maj7)

So what scales work with those degrees? 

None of the church modes. 

The b5 and Maj7 work with lydian, but not the m3. But it does work with the 6th mode of harmonic minor, which is Lydian #2. A B# C# D# E F# G#. 

So while you play voicings of the Am/Maj7b5 (and not necessarily the whole thing, but different notes from it), you can grab any notes from that scale and include them in the chords. If you find another scale that works with the chord, there's a mode of the gypsy scale... A B C D# E F G# Now there's the choice of including notes from that scale instead of the lydian #2. A Locrian Maj7 (A locrian with a raised 7th). These are the scales I found quickly now, but i'm not familiar with him using these much.


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