SynthAxe: Difference between revisions

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~~https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SynthAxe~~

The SynthAxe is widely covered in numerous interviews on this site. Here are the main points, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SynthAxe:

The SynthAxe is widely covered in numerous interviews on this site. Here are the main points:

==What is the Synthaxe?==

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=SynthAxe quotes=

__TOC__

==[[Reaching For The Uncommon Chord]]==

'''SYNTHAXE'''

The Synthaxe is not a step beyond that (to me) [referring to guitar synths] — it's a giant leap beyond. It's a MIDI controller, it's very accurate, and it works. It's a very strange instrument to play at first because it's got two sets of strings. It will drive any synthesizer capable of handling all the MIDI information that the Synthaxe puts out. It puts out more information than a lot of keyboards would. You can hook it up to Oberheims, and that works really well. With the Synthaxe you have the problems of coping with a new instrument in as much as it feels different - you're playing a different set of strings with each hand, and the fret spacing is completely different, but it doesn't take very long to get used to. I only played it a couple of times, and each time I played it, I got more into it. To me the Synthaxe is a fantastic achievement. I find it amazing that someone went to these lengths to create this instrument.

==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]==

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==[[Allan Holdsworth: Synthaxe (Guitar Player 1985)]]==

~~Allan Holdsworth~~

~~Synth Axe~~

~~Guitar Player, June 1986~~

~~As told to Tom Mulhern~~

Among the first to use a '''SynthAxe''', Allan Holdsworth has just released Atavachron [Enigma (dist. by Capitol), 72064-1], on which he uses the synthesizer controller extensively. A prominent display of the instrument under Holdsworth’s control, "Non Brewed Condiment," from Atavachron, appeared as a '''SynthAxe''' demonstration on the flipside of Guitar Player’s January 1986 Soundpage.

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==[[HUMBLE GUITAR MASTER ALLAN HOLDSWORTH ALWAYS STRUGGLES TO PAY THE RENT]]==

For his three Town Pump dates, Holdsworth will be focusing on material from his new album Atavachron. Named after a word he heard in a Star Trek episode, the new LP features a newly developed instrument called the Synth Axe. “It’s like the next generation of machines that guitarists can play to control synthesizers,” says Holdsworth. As well as his trusty Synth Axe, Holdsworth will be joined on stage by drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Billy Childs (formerly with saxman Freddie Hubbard).

For his three Town Pump dates, Holdsworth will be focusing on material from his new album Atavachron. Named after a word he heard in a Star Trek episode, the new LP features a newly developed instrument called the '''Synth Axe'''. “It’s like the next generation of machines that guitarists can play to control synthesizers,” says Holdsworth. As well as his trusty Synth Axe, Holdsworth will be joined on stage by drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Billy Childs (formerly with saxman Freddie Hubbard).

==[[Castles Made Of Sand (Guitarist 1987)]]==

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IM - There was also a double-necked Steinberger which I saw you using at a gig last year. Are you still using that?

"I used it on one gig as an experiment. I only did it once because I didn’t like the guitar. ~~Synthax~~ (sic) loaned me that guitar because the expense of doing the tour was so much that I went home and lost money. It wasn’t done like normal tours, we had to pay for our own hotels and transportation, so by the time it was over we lost money.

"I used it on one gig as an experiment. I only did it once because I didn’t like the guitar. '''SynthAx''' (sic) loaned me that guitar because the expense of doing the tour was so much that I went home and lost money. It wasn’t done like normal tours, we had to pay for our own hotels and transportation, so by the time it was over we lost money.

IM - That was the Guitarist Tour wasn’t it?

"Yeah. That’s why this year was a bit of a disaster as well because none of the guys who were normally in the band could do that tour and then I got this opportunity to do this thing with Level 42, which was perfect, because I couldn’t do a tour and then we had one gig to do, a guy asked if we could bail his out a little bit and help him with the finance thing which was the only reason that we would do it and I said yes. But obviously I would be doing it for free, but they wanted Gary to do it for free and I couldn’t accept that so I said no you have to pay him and they were paying for the other two guys to come over from the States the day before the gig, meaning that they would get in totally jet lagged and then we would have to do the gig without a rehearsal and the guy said, ‘oh well you can rehearse at the gig’, but that never happens, even if we got there at like 10 a.m., those guys are not going to want to get up that early and it was a big gig, like a London gig with no rehearsal, so as far as I was concerned it had to be knocked on the head. But what really did it is he started threatening me with giving me a hard time in his magazine, so up until that point I had only decided in my mind that I didn’t want to but I was hovering on it because I knew the reason why we had decided to do it in the first place was to help them out, but when he said that a release valve went and I said no, we’re not doing it. It was the wrong thing for me, the exortationate expenses were such that I couldn’t bring the ~~Synthax~~. I brought my consul [sic] and ~~Synthax~~ supplied me with a ~~Synthax~~. I brought one synthesizer and two TX7 modules which are emergency machines really. We couldn’t afford to rent the Matrix 12, which was what I would normally use, because they were too expensive. I had this idea of having this double-neck made so I could play all of the music that I had done on ~~Synthax~~ on guitar. The problem was that although I really love the Steinberger I didn’t like that one. Since then I have had another made but it had similar problems. But I found the regular guitar was suffering on the double neck so they made it longer to give it a bit more top, make it a little bit ‘brighter’ sounding. It’s not really happened, I don’t think it’s going to be a success. The huge guitar that I was talking to you about is a complete success but it’s just tuned like a regular guitar but really long."

"Yeah. That’s why this year was a bit of a disaster as well because none of the guys who were normally in the band could do that tour and then I got this opportunity to do this thing with Level 42, which was perfect, because I couldn’t do a tour and then we had one gig to do, a guy asked if we could bail his out a little bit and help him with the finance thing which was the only reason that we would do it and I said yes. But obviously I would be doing it for free, but they wanted Gary to do it for free and I couldn’t accept that so I said no you have to pay him and they were paying for the other two guys to come over from the States the day before the gig, meaning that they would get in totally jet lagged and then we would have to do the gig without a rehearsal and the guy said, ‘oh well you can rehearse at the gig’, but that never happens, even if we got there at like 10 a.m., those guys are not going to want to get up that early and it was a big gig, like a London gig with no rehearsal, so as far as I was concerned it had to be knocked on the head. But what really did it is he started threatening me with giving me a hard time in his magazine, so up until that point I had only decided in my mind that I didn’t want to but I was hovering on it because I knew the reason why we had decided to do it in the first place was to help them out, but when he said that a release valve went and I said no, we’re not doing it. It was the wrong thing for me, the exortationate expenses were such that I couldn’t bring the '''SynthAx'''. I brought my consul [sic] and '''SynthAx''' supplied me with a '''SynthAx'''. I brought one synthesizer and two TX7 modules which are emergency machines really. We couldn’t afford to rent the Matrix 12, which was what I would normally use, because they were too expensive. I had this idea of having this double-neck made so I could play all of the music that I had done on '''SynthAx''' on guitar. The problem was that although I really love the Steinberger I didn’t like that one. Since then I have had another made but it had similar problems. But I found the regular guitar was suffering on the double neck so they made it longer to give it a bit more top, make it a little bit ‘brighter’ sounding. It’s not really happened, I don’t think it’s going to be a success. The huge guitar that I was talking to you about is a complete success but it’s just tuned like a regular guitar but really long."

==[[No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)]]==

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Allan: The way I got into it was an accident. When I would work with keyboard players who had Oberheims, every time they got on that I’d look over and go, "Geez. that’s a nice sound." So the name Oberheim was in the back of my mind somewhere. And then, when I started playing the '''SynthAxe''', the guy recommended the Oberheim because it has the most sophisticated MIDI control, and you can get to anything. Essentially, it’s an old-fashioned synthesizer with patch chords: you can take any oscillator, you can patch it to anything. On the Matrix 12, there’s eight low frequency oscillators so you don’t need processing. it’s just an unbelievable instrument, you can assign anything to anything else. Most of the synthesizers now went the other way, they have a little plastic window in there, and there’s two buttons on the front, and with the combination of movements, these two buttons do everything. It’s a nightmare. With the Oberheim, if you want something you go to the knob for that function-you turn it and you’re do ne.

==[[The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)]]==

In recent years, Holdsworth has found an outlet for his horn-playing ambition in the '''SynthAxe''', a guitar-like synthesiser controller with a tube into which the player blows to add expression.

‘The '''SynthAxe''' is close to what I want, cause it’s a combination of blowing and picking, so it’s like a horn and guitar. You don’t have to blow so hard though, it’s an open blowing, like blowing a balloon up; there’s no embouchure.’

There has been a certain resistance among followers of Holdsworth’s guitar playing to his use of the '''SynthAxe''', but Holdsworth feels they are missing the point.

‘That tends to prove that lot of guitar players are not listening to the notes. They’re listening to something else. It’s the music that counts. Perhaps they can’t relate to the sound of it, but it’s being done just like it would on the guitar.’

==[[Axe Maniax (TGM 1993)]]==

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==[[Blinded By Science (Guitar Player 1993)]]==

The Wardenclyffe Tower features several cuts with Synthaxxe (sic) guitar synthesizer, but Allan says he’s retired that instrument from live performance, possibly even from recording. In its place, he’s dabbling with a new controller developed by Starr Switch. "The instrument has unbelievable potential," he beams. "It’s different than a guitar. It looks like a small keyboard. It’s laid out with 24 ‘strings,’ which are actually keys, and 23 frets or keys. It’s like a two-dimensional keyboard. You can play it vertically as well as horizontally, and play chords on a single ‘string,’ I had him design me one that’s like a guitar neck, where the different-colored keys are like the dot markers on a guitar."

The Wardenclyffe Tower features several cuts with '''Synthaxxe''' (sic) guitar synthesizer, but Allan says he’s retired that instrument from live performance, possibly even from recording. In its place, he’s dabbling with a new controller developed by Starr Switch. "The instrument has unbelievable potential," he beams. "It’s different than a guitar. It looks like a small keyboard. It’s laid out with 24 ‘strings,’ which are actually keys, and 23 frets or keys. It’s like a two-dimensional keyboard. You can play it vertically as well as horizontally, and play chords on a single ‘string,’ I had him design me one that’s like a guitar neck, where the different-colored keys are like the dot markers on a guitar."

==[[Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)]]==

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"And in fact that’s what happened. But luckily for me I’d started getting back into using guitar again. I had a lot of experimental guitars then, from a really small one to a couple of really huge baritone guitars, so that I could get at least on record get the kind of range that I could get with the '''SynthAxe'''. So miss that."

==[[Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)]]==

"I am discontent with what I can do with it," he says, "and I have always felt frustrated. I ended up playing the wrong instrument. But, at the same time, it would be too difficult for me to scrap it and start on a new instrument, even if I wanted to." His ambivalence with his instrument of choice is partly why he has taken to the '''SynthAxe''', an elaborate guitar synthesizer of which he has become the most prominent user.

"It opened up a whole new area, he says, “I can use the breath controller, and I wanted to play a horn. I was able to make the sound loud and soft, all the things I wanted to do with the guitar but couldn’t-the guitar being percussive by nature.

"Sure, you can change a note, but there’s only so much you can do, compared to a horn where you can make a note disappear completely and then bring it up again, make it loud or soft, all after it’s started. It’s really important to me, to shape the sound.

"That’s what I see with a complicated instrument like the '''SynthAxe'''. It’s still a tool. Music, the sound that it makes, is what’s important. What makes it is completely irrelevant.

==[[Allan Holdsworth: One Of A Kind (Guitar Shop 1995)]]==

“You won’t find me playing '''SynthAxe'''s much anymore, either. I quit playing one because the company went bust and I worried about owning a dinosaur that I could never get fixed. So I sold everything, including two '''SynthAxe'''s and a bunch of synthesizers. But then a few months ago, I started missing it, so I traded a guy I know two guitars for his one. It has some problems, though. I also don’t use guitar synth live anymore. It was getting more expensive to tour, and the biggest expense of all was transporting equipment, especially if we were going to a different country. We’d spend more money on that than we’d make at the gig. Plus, at one point I was using the '''SynthAxe''' for 50 percent of the material, and if it didn’t work for some reason, there went half the show. So it became a liability, even though I love the instrument. On Hard Hat Area, I only used it on the title cut and a solo in “Postlude”. I haven’t tried any other guitar synthesizers, either, like the Roland. I think that making pitch control a synthesizer is completely wrong. I’ve heard people do really great things with that approach, but it’s just not for me. I like the '''SynthAxe''' because it’s a controller that I can drive a synthesizer with, but when you stick a pickup on a guitar, the synth responds to all the tuning problems, and that gets to be a real pain. And overall guitar players seem to look at guitar synthesizers as a novelty, whereas for me – who never wanted to play the guitar in the first place – it was like a way to escape from it. And with the '''SynthAxe''' I could hook up to a wind patch and play chords on it, which was really great. I really love the instrument, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. People even used to leave notes on my amps between sets telling me to go back to playing regular guitar. Now I get notes asking me to go back to guitar synth!” (laughs)

==[[Allan Holdsworth Interview (richardhallebeek.com 1996)]]==

-You’re using less and less '''SynthAxe''' lately. Is that a conscious decision, just to put the instrument aside?

The problem is the company went bankrupt years ago. So I’m kind of stuck with a dinosaur.The parts are impossible to get and there is nobody to help me out if I have problems. Especially live the instrument is really unreliable so I stopped using it in that situation.In the studio it works fine and I still use it on a few songs per CD. When the '''SynthAxe''' was released I wanted to quit playing guitar and just play the '''SynthAxe'''. I thought it was an amazing instrument and I still think so. When the company went bankrupt I sold everything. Later I started to miss it. Coincidentally I met somebody who had one and I traded a bunch of guitars with his '''SynthAxe'''. Later on that one was stolen in L.A. Bass player Dean Deleo from the Stone Temple Pilots called me a year later and said he had seen the instrument in a pawn shop for $30. They tried to sell it as a plastic practise guitar, but it didn’t work because you need three parts to get some sound out of the instrument, ha ha. Now I just keep it safely locked away at home. I also use it a lot as a composing tool.

-What kind of sounds do you use for the '''SynthAxe'''?

Almost all the sounds are Oberheim synths. Great sounds.

==[[Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)]]==

- The '''SynthAxe''' offered opportunities to express myself the way I always wanted to do, I immediately fell in love with it when I tried it. If the company had not folded, I probably would have still used it live today, and maybe stopped playing the guitar altogether. However, this was not the case, production stopped, and hence all support. It became too risky to use, and I only use it for recordings nowadays. I get the sounds from Yamaha DX-7 and Oberheim synths. The only new modules I have acquired are from Korg. More recently I have tried a possible replacement for the '''SynthAxe''', Starr Switch. It seems promising but nothing is decided yet.

==[[Strong stuff from the brewery (EQ magazine 1997)]]==

Another item not in use at the Brewery is a patchbay. "I don’t believe in them," Holdsworth declares. "Every time you run a signal through a connector, you screw up the sound. All the pieces of equipment in my studio are very mobile, so if I want to put an EQ or limiter on something, I can take it right to the source." Tape machines are also rented in for recording projects. "I’m a big fan of Mitsubishi 880’s," says Holdsworth, "and, of course, analog machines. I’ll sometimes rent an Otari. It depends on what the budget can go for." The guitarist owns a pair of Alesis ADAT machines, which he keeps in the studio mainly for writing purposes. The same goes for his modest MIDI rig, which is driven by Cubase software running on an old Atari ST computer, Holdsworth’s Synth Axe MIDI controller, which was his main axe a few years ago, is now principally used to input data to the sequencer for writing applications or to trigger the occasional synth pad on records. While Allan was once mad for MIDI, the M-word now plays a fairly minor role in his music. "I quit on the MIDI stuff completely for a while, but I just got back into it recently. I don’t do it a lot, though, and I don’t want to do it a lot anymore; although it’s cool for writing."

==[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]==

TCG: On your "orchestral" rubato type pieces are they pre-arranged or more improvisational?

AH: Usually they’re completely improvised. It then goes into a piece of music that’s not improvised.

TCG: Are you thinking melodically or harmonically?

AH: I try to think about the whole thing. I use multiple delays on two Intelliflex units. They’re very flexible machines. I just set up a few multiple long delays and I feed the sound into the processor with a volume pedal. The '''SynthAxe''' is what got me into this sound.

TCG: Do you still have the '''SynthAxe'''?

AH: I have two, but I use them sparingly. I can’t play a regular guitar synth. The '''SynthAxe''' is not like a guitar. The notes are in the same places, but he feel is totally different. I could just forget I was supposed to be playing a guitar. I used to do clinics for '''SynthAxe''' and audience members would ask if I could make it sound like a Strat. It was pretty funny. They would want to play blues licks on it. It was quite hilarious. I never looked at it in that way. Quite the opposite.

TCG: When did synthesizers enter the picture?

AH: I tried the early Roland synth and loved the idea of the sounds, but it didn’t really work for me. Tom Mulhern at Guitar Player magazine recommended the '''SynthAxe''' and that was where that relationship started. Also guitar-wise, I played Charvels for a while, and later discovered the Steinberger. That was it. I just thought it was amazing. It was real hard to switch back to any other guitar. I became friendly with Ned Steinberger. He would send me the guitars without any frets, and then I would send them to a luthier by the name of Bill DeLap and he would flatten the fingerboard, and take out the relief. I like the neck to be absolutely straight. We would put Jim Dunlop 6000 fret wire in it. I had quite a few of these. Also, Bill built me a few baritone guitars. He made me a regular length wooden Steinberger and basically I’ve been playing that till I hooked up with Carvin for this new custom guitar. I play about 80% of the time now on the Carvin and 20% on the Steinberger. It’s still nice to switch back and forth. I love headless guitars. I think the new Carvin is an excellent guitar.

==[[One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)]]==

The '''SynthAxe''' was a particular favorite tool for Holdsworth through the ‘80s in that it helped him get closer to the legato sax style that he had been emulating since hearing Coltrane recordings for the first time back in the ‘60s.

"Because I always wanted to play a horn, which is a non-percussive instrument, the guitar is essentially a percussive and I try and make it sound like it’s not," he explains. "But one of the things I always wanted to do was to be able to make a note and then change the whole shape of it after it sounded. You know, make it soft, make it loud, put vibrato on it, take it off, change the timbre of the sound, all after the note was played, which is not a very easy thing to do with a percussive instrument. And with the '''SynthAxe''' I have that ability because I can hook it up to a breath controller and I can do exactly that. I can make a note and change it and shape it in a totally different way than I can do on the guitar. And because the guitar gave me the chords -which I would’ve surely missed if I would have played the horn and not the guitar - eventually it gave me the combination of being able to play like a chordal instrument and a horn at the same time, and that was very appealing to me. It gave me a lot of textural possibilities that I didn’t have with guitar. And I kind of got engrossed in it. But I don’t feel exactly the same way about it now. I think of it more as something that I can use for extra color."

He also plays headless Steinberger guitars, custom made headless guitars by Bill DeLap and makes sparing use of his '''SynthAxe''' synthesizer controller. He uses Stella guitar strings and is very pleased with his setup of two Yamaha DG-80 amplifiers with extension speaker cabinets in combination with a DG-1000 pre-amp.

==[[The Sixteen Men Of Tain (musired.com 2000, Spanish language)]]==

Tell me more about the '''SynthAxe'''.

I am one of the few people that use it and perhaps one of the few people who have really appreciated what this instrument is. It is an instrument ahead of its time and it is a bit sad that has disappeared. Most guitarists don’t want to know anything of it. I used to do clinics, tried to find new sounds and people asked me to make it sounds like a guitar. It looked interesting to lend it to other people because they always tried to play guitar things with it, and I tried it like other instrument. The only thing it had in common with the guitar is that people knew where the notes were. But now it has disappeared. It’s a pity.

==[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]==

I’m pleased to see there’s a lot of guitar soloing on the new record.

"Well the last band album I did was ‘Hard Hat Area’ and we had Steve Hunt on keyboards and that fills out things sonically. On my solo records I would often play the '''SynthAxe''' to fill out some of that missing sound, but I’ve been consciously trying to lower the '''SynthAxe''' content, isolating it to one or two tracks on a record. So yeah, more guitar."

Tell us about the '''SynthAxe''' synth controller. Guitarists never really understood it, did they?

"No they didn’t. I suppose some of the things in there are old technology now, but what they achieved with that thing is still amazing. The thing that stood out for me with the '''SynthAxe''' was its difference. When I picked it up it was like I’d put on a space helmet and gone to another world. And when I put it down and picked up a guitar, I took the space helmet off and came back down to earth.

"The Axe’s problem was guitar players. I remember in California when I was doing some demonstrations for them, I’d be playing it and I’d have the breath controller hooked up and everything. Some guy, inevitably, would come up and say: ‘But can you make it sound like a Strat?’ and you just want to beat him over the head with it. Then he’d pick it up and go straight to his blues licks!

"When they went out of business I got so depressed. I was using it more than the guitar at one point and I thought, ‘You can’t do this or you’re gonna be trapped; it’ll break down and you’ll never get it fixed’. So I sold everything and emptied it out of my life. But in six months I was craving it again so I went on a quest to find another one. And I found one, but I never take it out of the studio; it stays at home."

You’re one of the few players technically capable of taking really good samples of other instruments and playing them via the '''SynthAxe'''....

"But the beauty of the '''SynthAxe''' was that it allowed me to go into that other place like in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. My two favourite synthesisers were Oberheim Xpanders and Matrix 12s, and the old Yamaha DX7. With the Oberheims I was always looking for a haunting, hornlike sound, but one which very obviously wasn’t a saxophone, a trumpet or something, which is pointless. The idea was to create a sound that I hadn’t heard before."

==[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)]]==

We’re almost 20 years after the invention of the '''SynthAxe''', but there’s not much new stuff coming out in that arena, except for some glitchy pitch-to-midi guitar synths from Roland. Do you see or expect anything new?

I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything. I’ve never seen anything that came close to it. Nothing. Having the keys on it and just the whole way the whole thing worked was just really amazing. I felt like I could get inside it, it felt like part of me. And most of the other ones you know, they don’t work. You have to make it work with a guitar sound, mix the guitar sound with the synth sound and half the notes are missing, you know. With the '''SynthAxe''', that doesn’t happen.

==[[Don’t you know? The Lost Words (Oneiric Moor 2003)]]==

OF: Allan, since the eighties you have been the greatest Ambassador of the '''SynthAxe''', but it is only now you decide to make a complete album with it... Why ?

AH: In the past I had thought about it, but I was focusing on Group projects, so although I wanted to do it, I just never had the opportunity. When I found myself with the time to do it between projects, I went for it.

==[[Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)]]==

Back when you were beginning to experiment with guitar synthesis, you lamented that guitarists tended to be closed minded to new sounds and approaches. Have we become more progressive since then?

Things haven’t changed a whole lot. I loved the '''SynthAxe''' because it was still a guitar, but it took me into a whole other world of textures and sounds that I couldn’t do with a standard electric. And, you know, eight out of ten guitarists who saw me play it would come up and ask if I could make it sound like a Fender Stratocaster. Besides falling off the chair, I would wonder why anyone would spend all of their money on this thing to make it sound like a $500 guitar? So I think my view is that things are still the same.

==[[A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)]]==

Bill: Do you ever compose on keyboards?

Allan: No, I can’t play piano at all. I like to work with the '''SynthAxe''', though.

Bill: That’s strictly a composing tool for you at this point?

Allan: Yeah, I use it in studio. And it’s a great instrument, but it’s falling apart now.

Bill: Not very road-worthy?

Allan: No, all the cables look like hell, with the plastic peeling off and everything. I keep having to wrap them with duct tape. And you have these big 20-pin connectors for it. It’s not something you want to go and mess around with a soldiering iron. I can’t see well enough to do that. You know, I’ve always been fascinated by electronics but when I opened that thing when I first got it, it currently have two of them. One actually is in perfect working order, the other one works for about 20 minutes. So you gotta be quick with that one. I love the keys on it. I think that was the real genius about the instrument. The trigger strings have got a slight time lag but the keys are instantaneous, just like playing a keyboard. It’s so beautiful to go and play a chord while you hold the keys down, and there’s one key for each string. When you hold a chord down you can take your hand off and move it to the next chord so you can get this more seamless, piano-like thing, which would be very difficult to do with any other kind of MIDI guitar controller. So I’m really fond of that thing but it’s going to die eventually. I’ll have to get a Roland guitar synth or something else to replace it. I’d really miss having a guitar synthesizer if this other one died.

Bill: I wonder how you would deal with the fact that your acoustic wouldn’t be giving you that sustain quality that is so much a signature of your electric sound.

Allan: Yeah, well, that’s true. I love to hear other people play acoustic guitar. I’m not very fond of hearing myself play it. But I think when I really quit playing acoustic guitar was when I got the '''SynthAxe''', because that just opened up this other door and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I can leave that other guitar behind completely.’ Because there was a period after I had been playing the '''SynthAxe''' for about a year, I was even getting frustrated with electric guitar. There was a point where I was actually close to making a decision to just play the '''SynthAxe''' and forget about the guitar.

Bill: I remember that period when you were playing the '''SynthAxe''' almost exclusively. And you had that plastic tube that ran from the instrument to your mouth to help you shape the notes, like Peter Frampton or Stevie Wonder did in the ‘70s with the Talking Box.

Allan: Yeah, I always wanted to play a horn and I loved that way that you could shape the note with that gadget. And because it was an analog device, you couldn’t record it in MIDI or anything. It was made by Niles Steiner, before he made the EVI or the EWI. I think it was called The Mouth Destruction. Basically, you can set it so that there’s no sound at all and as you blow it raises the volume and opens the filter, so it’s pretty organic. I was really getting into it. It was really great to be able to play a note and then make it loud and make it soft, then make it loud again...all the things that you can’t do with a guitar that you can do with a horn or a violin. So I was loving that.

==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]==

MM: Are you still using the '''SynthAxe'''…

AH: Only in the studio because they’re so rare now…they haven’t been made in several years. I have two of them…one works and one doesn’t. I guess if I tried I could track down someone from the original company to work on it for me, but really it’s too much stuff for me to carry around and try and travel with. I’m afraid of the reliability issue, too…I just cross my fingers and hope it keeps going in the studio.

==[[No Rearview Mirrors (20th Century Guitar 2007)]]==

TCG: Okay, that’s cool. Tell me, is it a 2-CD set called Then, that’s all Synth Axe, or Just for the Curious?

AH: No, it’s called Against the Clock (Alternity Records).

TCG: That’s the compilation.

AH: Yeah, it’s a double CD. One of the discs has the majority of the guitar stuff on it and then the second disc is mostly Synth Axe but there are some guitar tracks on that side as well. We didn’t have room for it on the other CD so we kind of put a couple of guitar tracks at the end of the Synth Axe side. I did an album of my own called Flat Tire. Flat Tire is just a single, it’s not a double-album. It’s a single album and I did it right after my divorce. I didn’t really have a full-on studio set up then so it was...I lost my studio in the process. I was just doing some stuff in this house that I rented in San Juan Capistrano. So a friend of mine had kind of commissioned me to do an album for him but unfortunately, I couldn’t do it as a guitar album, so it ended up being a Synth Axe album,

TCG: Well, divorces do that to us, Al, and we’re all pretty human at heart. Do you still have the Oberheim modules?

AH: No, wow, this must be about twenty years ago now, when Synth Axe went out of business, I got really disappointed. I was really distressed about it because I was actually playing that more than I was playing the guitar and I did used to get a little bit afraid of it for that reason. I thought "Well, if this goes away and you focus on that and leave the guitar behind, then what’s going to happen when this thing breaks and they don’t make it anymore”. I did a stupid, impulsive thing, which is sold everything. I had two Synth Axes. I sold them both and I sold all my synthesizers and said "To hell with it! If they’ve gone away, what am I going to do? I didn’t want to get stuck playing an antique," so I thought "Well, the guitar is calling my name again so get back to that!” So sold them and then about six months later, I was really having some serious withdrawal symptoms and really missed it, and then friend of mine worked at Guitar Center, and he told me about this guy who had a Synth Axe and was trying to sell it and so I called up the guy up and actually, I didn’t have any money to buy it at the time. I traded him a couple of guitars for it so that’s how l ended up with the Synth Axe that have now. So it doesn’t go anywhere, it just stays in the studio. I just use it as a writing tool or for some soundscape stuff or whatever and I use it until it decides it doesn’t want to wake up anymore and then that will be the end of that (laughter).

==[[Harnessing momentum (Innerviews 2008)]]==

How do you communicate with the band when you present new music to them?

I just play it for them. I’ll either record it and give them a CD or just play it during rehearsal and make suggestions about how I would like it to go, and that’s basically it. I recently started recording things again, which seems to be a good way of doing things. I also like to write things on the '''SynthAxe''' because I can record directly into a sequencer and play it back. It still works pretty well.

So, the '''SynthAxe''' is still lurking out there somewhere?

Yeah, but I just use it in the studio. It stays there. It’s probably going to die soon at some point.

You’ve been saying that for more than 15 years. [laughs]

True. [laughs] It’s not roadworthy, but it is still working.

==[[The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)]]==

Will there be any '''SynthAxe''' on the new records?

It’s mostly guitar, but there are a couple of '''SynthAxe''' things, just because I like to take advantage of the instrument while it is still running. Every time I turn it on I wonder if it’s going to start up.

You have explored a lot of different timbres and approaches to phrasing with the '''SynthAxe'''. Has some of that orchestral sensibility found its way into your guitar playing?

Yeah, the '''SynthAxe''' made me think a whole lot differently about the guitar, and at one point I was considering not playing guitar at all. I initially wanted to play a wind instrument, and when I used a breath controller with the Synth-Axe, it allowed me a certain amount of expression that I was unable to get from the guitar, particularly the ability to make notes loud and then soft and then loud again, and to change the sound of the note after it had been struck. On the guitar you can shape notes a little bit, but not as much. When the '''SynthAxe''' company went out of business, however, I decided that I’d better go back to the guitar.

==[[Allan Holdsworth - Jazz/Fusion Guitarist (Musicguy247 2017)]]==

R.V.B. - You toyed with electronics a lot and eventually started using the '''SynthAxe'''. It enhanced the sound of the guitar but did it change the way you approached playing the guitar?

A.H. - I fell in love with that thing. I learned things from it... for sure. I took some things from the '''SynthAxe''' and applied them to the guitar. The thing about the '''SynthAxe''' is - it’s its own beast. It makes up sounds on its own. The beauty was, I could use synthesized patches or the breath controller to make horn like sounds, that I could never make on the guitar. I was able to use string patches and mic patches. It gave me a of flexibility that the guitar didn’t have. I really enjoyed playing with it.

Allan Holdsworth Talks '''SynthAxe'''s, Jaw-Dropping Solos and More (Guitar World 2017)]]==

An interesting phase of your career was your use of the '''SynthAxe'''. Do you still play it? —Galen Peterson

Yes. It’s an exquisitely unique instrument. The '''SynthAxe''' enables you to achieve a whole world of sonic textures that you cannot get with a guitar. There was nothing like it before and nothing like it since. I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since Atavachron [1986]. Bill Aitken from Solid State Logic was the primary inventor. He was a guitarist but he wanted to be able to play synthesizer, so he came up with the idea of making this unusual-looking machine. I played one of the first ones and loved it. It makes no sound of its own because it’s essentially just a MIDI controller.

People used to write notes on my amp, asking me to stop playing the '''SynthAxe''' and play the guitar instead. But now people often ask me, “We’d love to hear you play the '''SynthAxe'''—did you bring it?” I rarely play it onstage anymore because it’s too costly to take on the road and it requires a lot of equipment.

==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview (Musoscribe 2017)]]==

Early on in your solo career, you became very closely associated with the '''SynthAxe'''. What piqued your initial interest in that instrument?

It went back really far into my childhood, actually. Because I always wanted to play a horn or a violin or something where you could shape a note, as opposed to the guitar which is basically a percussion instrument. And I always tried to get the guitar to sound like it wasn’t a percussion instrument.

When the '''SynthAxe''' came along, it opened the door to not only different textures and sounds that were unavailable on the guitar, but with the use of the breath control, I could do all the things that I wanted to do if I had been a horn player of some sort. I learned a lot from just playing that instrument. I still use it a lot in the studio; for the stuff I’m working on now, it has probably ended up on every track.

You’ve explored other technological innovations, and you’re involved with some development yourself. Have you played any newer things, like the Moog guitar?

Briefly, but it was a few years ago. But it was like a step backwards for me; if I have to go from the '''SynthAxe''', the thing is going to have to be absolutely, incredibly remarkable for me to want to make a jump.

==[[Interview_with_Allan_Holdsworth_(Jazz_Italia_2005)]]==

ALEX: In your opinion, why has no one else in the guitar synth world proposed a valid alternative to Roland's hexaphonic pickup, which is not very faithful, apart from SynthAxe and Yamaha, which have a virtually error-free system?

ALLAN: I do not know ... because probably many guitarists, when I did some clinics, they asked me: "well, can you make it sound like a Strat?" and I would answer "why do you want to make it sound like a Strat? Why take a guitar synth with all these sounds and then play it like a guitar? You already have a guitar!" But I think that most guitarists want to play the guitar so they do not want to waste time managing it from a technical point of view. The reason why nobody has done another is because it is very complex to make the sound of a guitar. As with a keyboard, driving a synthesizer is simple, you just have to switch on a switch or not, with the guitar it's hard. Yamaha has made a great system, the strings are very low. The problem, in this case, is that if you do bending you may have precision defects since it is calculated at the bridge level ... The SynthAxe was completely different. Each key was separated on each string and the sensors were inside the strings themselves - they are like microphones so it makes sense the movement of the string as well as knowing how long the string is and then know when bend is possible if you play more towards the neck and how much if you play more towards the bridge. It's all programmed, a great machine. But they are very delicate, I have one that works well and one that does not work. At the beginning they were very reliable but now I would fear to take another one. [Machine back translated.]

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@@ Line 1: / Line 1: @@
-https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SynthAxe
+The SynthAxe is widely covered in numerous interviews on this site. Here are the main points, see also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SynthAxe:
-The SynthAxe is widely covered in numerous interviews on this site. Here are the main points:
 ==What is the Synthaxe?==
@@ Line 18: / Line 16: @@
 =SynthAxe quotes=
+__TOC__
+==[[Reaching For The Uncommon Chord]]==
+'''SYNTHAXE'''
+The Synthaxe is not a step beyond that (to me) [referring to guitar synths] — it's a giant leap beyond. It's a MIDI controller, it's very accurate, and it works. It's a very strange instrument to play at first because it's got two sets of strings. It will drive any synthesizer capable of handling all the MIDI information that the Synthaxe puts out. It puts out more information than a lot of keyboards would. You can hook it up to Oberheims, and that works really well. With the Synthaxe you have the problems of coping with a new instrument in as much as it feels different - you're playing a different set of strings with each hand, and the fret spacing is completely different, but it doesn't take very long to get used to. I only played it a couple of times, and each time I played it, I got more into it. To me the Synthaxe is a fantastic achievement. I find it amazing that someone went to these lengths to create this instrument.
 ==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]==
@@ Line 29: / Line 33: @@
 ==[[Allan Holdsworth: Synthaxe (Guitar Player 1985)]]==
-Allan Holdsworth
-Synth Axe
-Guitar Player, June 1986
-As told to Tom Mulhern
 Among the first to use a '''SynthAxe''', Allan Holdsworth has just released Atavachron [Enigma (dist. by Capitol), 72064-1], on which he uses the synthesizer controller extensively. A prominent display of the instrument under Holdsworth’s control, "Non Brewed Condiment," from Atavachron, appeared as a '''SynthAxe''' demonstration on the flipside of Guitar Player’s January 1986 Soundpage.
@@ Line 243: / Line 239: @@
 ==[[HUMBLE GUITAR MASTER ALLAN HOLDSWORTH ALWAYS STRUGGLES TO PAY THE RENT]]==
-For his three Town Pump dates, Holdsworth will be focusing on material from his new album Atavachron. Named after a word he heard in a Star Trek episode, the new LP features a newly developed instrument called the Synth Axe. “It’s like the next generation of machines that guitarists can play to control synthesizers,” says Holdsworth. As well as his trusty Synth Axe, Holdsworth will be joined on stage by drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Billy Childs (formerly with saxman Freddie Hubbard).
+For his three Town Pump dates, Holdsworth will be focusing on material from his new album Atavachron. Named after a word he heard in a Star Trek episode, the new LP features a newly developed instrument called the '''Synth Axe'''. “It’s like the next generation of machines that guitarists can play to control synthesizers,” says Holdsworth. As well as his trusty Synth Axe, Holdsworth will be joined on stage by drummer Chad Wackerman, bassist Jimmy Johnson, and keyboardist Billy Childs (formerly with saxman Freddie Hubbard).
 ==[[Castles Made Of Sand (Guitarist 1987)]]==
@@ Line 486: / Line 482: @@
 IM - There was also a double-necked Steinberger which I saw you using at a gig last year. Are you still using that?
-"I used it on one gig as an experiment. I only did it once because I didn’t like the guitar. Synthax (sic) loaned me that guitar because the expense of doing the tour was so much that I went home and lost money. It wasn’t done like normal tours, we had to pay for our own hotels and transportation, so by the time it was over we lost money.
+"I used it on one gig as an experiment. I only did it once because I didn’t like the guitar. '''SynthAx''' (sic) loaned me that guitar because the expense of doing the tour was so much that I went home and lost money. It wasn’t done like normal tours, we had to pay for our own hotels and transportation, so by the time it was over we lost money.
 IM - That was the Guitarist Tour wasn’t it?
-"Yeah. That’s why this year was a bit of a disaster as well because none of the guys who were normally in the band could do that tour and then I got this opportunity to do this thing with Level 42, which was perfect, because I couldn’t do a tour and then we had one gig to do, a guy asked if we could bail his out a little bit and help him with the finance thing which was the only reason that we would do it and I said yes. But obviously I would be doing it for free, but they wanted Gary to do it for free and I couldn’t accept that so I said no you have to pay him and they were paying for the other two guys to come over from the States the day before the gig, meaning that they would get in totally jet lagged and then we would have to do the gig without a rehearsal and the guy said, ‘oh well you can rehearse at the gig’, but that never happens, even if we got there at like 10 a.m., those guys are not going to want to get up that early and it was a big gig, like a London gig with no rehearsal, so as far as I was concerned it had to be knocked on the head. But what really did it is he started threatening me with giving me a hard time in his magazine, so up until that point I had only decided in my mind that I didn’t want to but I was hovering on it because I knew the reason why we had decided to do it in the first place was to help them out, but when he said that a release valve went and I said no, we’re not doing it. It was the wrong thing for me, the exortationate expenses were such that I couldn’t bring the Synthax. I brought my consul [sic] and Synthax supplied me with a Synthax. I brought one synthesizer and two TX7 modules which are emergency machines really. We couldn’t afford to rent the Matrix 12, which was what I would normally use, because they were too expensive. I had this idea of having this double-neck made so I could play all of the music that I had done on Synthax on guitar. The problem was that although I really love the Steinberger I didn’t like that one. Since then I have had another made but it had similar problems. But I found the regular guitar was suffering on the double neck so they made it longer to give it a bit more top, make it a little bit ‘brighter’ sounding. It’s not really happened, I don’t think it’s going to be a success. The huge guitar that I was talking to you about is a complete success but it’s just tuned like a regular guitar but really long."
+"Yeah. That’s why this year was a bit of a disaster as well because none of the guys who were normally in the band could do that tour and then I got this opportunity to do this thing with Level 42, which was perfect, because I couldn’t do a tour and then we had one gig to do, a guy asked if we could bail his out a little bit and help him with the finance thing which was the only reason that we would do it and I said yes. But obviously I would be doing it for free, but they wanted Gary to do it for free and I couldn’t accept that so I said no you have to pay him and they were paying for the other two guys to come over from the States the day before the gig, meaning that they would get in totally jet lagged and then we would have to do the gig without a rehearsal and the guy said, ‘oh well you can rehearse at the gig’, but that never happens, even if we got there at like 10 a.m., those guys are not going to want to get up that early and it was a big gig, like a London gig with no rehearsal, so as far as I was concerned it had to be knocked on the head. But what really did it is he started threatening me with giving me a hard time in his magazine, so up until that point I had only decided in my mind that I didn’t want to but I was hovering on it because I knew the reason why we had decided to do it in the first place was to help them out, but when he said that a release valve went and I said no, we’re not doing it. It was the wrong thing for me, the exortationate expenses were such that I couldn’t bring the '''SynthAx'''. I brought my consul [sic] and '''SynthAx''' supplied me with a '''SynthAx'''. I brought one synthesizer and two TX7 modules which are emergency machines really. We couldn’t afford to rent the Matrix 12, which was what I would normally use, because they were too expensive. I had this idea of having this double-neck made so I could play all of the music that I had done on '''SynthAx''' on guitar. The problem was that although I really love the Steinberger I didn’t like that one. Since then I have had another made but it had similar problems. But I found the regular guitar was suffering on the double neck so they made it longer to give it a bit more top, make it a little bit ‘brighter’ sounding. It’s not really happened, I don’t think it’s going to be a success. The huge guitar that I was talking to you about is a complete success but it’s just tuned like a regular guitar but really long."
 ==[[No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)]]==
@@ Line 505: / Line 501: @@
 Allan: The way I got into it was an accident. When I would work with keyboard players who had Oberheims, every time they got on that I’d look over and go, "Geez. that’s a nice sound." So the name Oberheim was in the back of my mind somewhere. And then, when I started playing the '''SynthAxe''', the guy recommended the Oberheim because it has the most sophisticated MIDI control, and you can get to anything. Essentially, it’s an old-fashioned synthesizer with patch chords: you can take any oscillator, you can patch it to anything. On the Matrix 12, there’s eight low frequency oscillators so you don’t need processing. it’s just an unbelievable instrument, you can assign anything to anything else. Most of the synthesizers now went the other way, they have a little plastic window in there, and there’s two buttons on the front, and with the combination of movements, these two buttons do everything. It’s a nightmare. With the Oberheim, if you want something you go to the knob for that function-you turn it and you’re do ne.
+==[[The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992)]]==
+In recent years, Holdsworth has found an outlet for his horn-playing ambition in the '''SynthAxe''', a guitar-like synthesiser controller with a tube into which the player blows to add expression.
+‘The '''SynthAxe''' is close to what I want, cause it’s a combination of blowing and picking, so it’s like a horn and guitar. You don’t have to blow so hard though, it’s an open blowing, like blowing a balloon up; there’s no embouchure.’
+There has been a certain resistance among followers of Holdsworth’s guitar playing to his use of the '''SynthAxe''', but Holdsworth feels they are missing the point.
+‘That tends to prove that lot of guitar players are not listening to the notes. They’re listening to something else. It’s the music that counts. Perhaps they can’t relate to the sound of it, but it’s being done just like it would on the guitar.’
 ==[[Axe Maniax (TGM 1993)]]==
@@ Line 516: / Line 522: @@
 ==[[Blinded By Science (Guitar Player 1993)]]==
-The Wardenclyffe Tower features several cuts with Synthaxxe (sic) guitar synthesizer, but Allan says he’s retired that instrument from live performance, possibly even from recording. In its place, he’s dabbling with a new controller developed by Starr Switch. "The instrument has unbelievable potential," he beams. "It’s different than a guitar. It looks like a small keyboard. It’s laid out with 24 ‘strings,’ which are actually keys, and 23 frets or keys. It’s like a two-dimensional keyboard. You can play it vertically as well as horizontally, and play chords on a single ‘string,’ I had him design me one that’s like a guitar neck, where the different-colored keys are like the dot markers on a guitar."
+The Wardenclyffe Tower features several cuts with '''Synthaxxe''' (sic) guitar synthesizer, but Allan says he’s retired that instrument from live performance, possibly even from recording. In its place, he’s dabbling with a new controller developed by Starr Switch. "The instrument has unbelievable potential," he beams. "It’s different than a guitar. It looks like a small keyboard. It’s laid out with 24 ‘strings,’ which are actually keys, and 23 frets or keys. It’s like a two-dimensional keyboard. You can play it vertically as well as horizontally, and play chords on a single ‘string,’ I had him design me one that’s like a guitar neck, where the different-colored keys are like the dot markers on a guitar."
 ==[[Creating Imaginary Backdrops (Innerviews 1993)]]==
@@ Line 650: / Line 656: @@
 "And in fact that’s what happened. But luckily for me I’d started getting back into using guitar again. I had a lot of experimental guitars then, from a really small one to a couple of really huge baritone guitars, so that I could get at least on record get the kind of range that I could get with the '''SynthAxe'''. So miss that."
+==[[Allan Holdsworth Jam (Jazziz 1994)]]==
+"I am discontent with what I can do with it," he says, "and I have always felt frustrated. I ended up playing the wrong instrument. But, at the same time, it would be too difficult for me to scrap it and start on a new instrument, even if I wanted to." His ambivalence with his instrument of choice is partly why he has taken to the '''SynthAxe''', an elaborate guitar synthesizer of which he has become the most prominent user.
+"It opened up a whole new area, he says, “I can use the breath controller, and I wanted to play a horn. I was able to make the sound loud and soft, all the things I wanted to do with the guitar but couldn’t-the guitar being percussive by nature.
+"Sure, you can change a note, but there’s only so much you can do, compared to a horn where you can make a note disappear completely and then bring it up again, make it loud or soft, all after it’s started. It’s really important to me, to shape the sound.
+"That’s what I see with a complicated instrument like the '''SynthAxe'''. It’s still a tool. Music, the sound that it makes, is what’s important. What makes it is completely irrelevant.
+==[[Allan Holdsworth: One Of A Kind (Guitar Shop 1995)]]==
+“You won’t find me playing '''SynthAxe'''s much anymore, either. I quit playing one because the company went bust and I worried about owning a dinosaur that I could never get fixed. So I sold everything, including two '''SynthAxe'''s and a bunch of synthesizers. But then a few months ago, I started missing it, so I traded a guy I know two guitars for his one. It has some problems, though. I also don’t use guitar synth live anymore. It was getting more expensive to tour, and the biggest expense of all was transporting equipment, especially if we were going to a different country. We’d spend more money on that than we’d make at the gig. Plus, at one point I was using the '''SynthAxe''' for 50 percent of the material, and if it didn’t work for some reason, there went half the show. So it became a liability, even though I love the instrument. On Hard Hat Area, I only used it on the title cut and a solo in “Postlude”. I haven’t tried any other guitar synthesizers, either, like the Roland. I think that making pitch control a synthesizer is completely wrong. I’ve heard people do really great things with that approach, but it’s just not for me. I like the '''SynthAxe''' because it’s a controller that I can drive a synthesizer with, but when you stick a pickup on a guitar, the synth responds to all the tuning problems, and that gets to be a real pain. And overall guitar players seem to look at guitar synthesizers as a novelty, whereas for me – who never wanted to play the guitar in the first place – it was like a way to escape from it. And with the '''SynthAxe''' I could hook up to a wind patch and play chords on it, which was really great. I really love the instrument, but unfortunately, it didn’t last. People even used to leave notes on my amps between sets telling me to go back to playing regular guitar. Now I get notes asking me to go back to guitar synth!” (laughs)
+==[[Allan Holdsworth Interview (richardhallebeek.com 1996)]]==
+-You’re using less and less '''SynthAxe''' lately. Is that a conscious decision, just to put the instrument aside?
+The problem is the company went bankrupt years ago. So I’m kind of stuck with a dinosaur.The parts are impossible to get and there is nobody to help me out if I have problems. Especially live the instrument is really unreliable so I stopped using it in that situation.In the studio it works fine and I still use it on a few songs per CD. When the '''SynthAxe''' was released I wanted to quit playing guitar and just play the '''SynthAxe'''. I thought it was an amazing instrument and I still think so. When the company went bankrupt I sold everything. Later I started to miss it. Coincidentally I met somebody who had one and I traded a bunch of guitars with his '''SynthAxe'''. Later on that one was stolen in L.A. Bass player Dean Deleo from the Stone Temple Pilots called me a year later and said he had seen the instrument in a pawn shop for $30. They tried to sell it as a plastic practise guitar, but it didn’t work because you need three parts to get some sound out of the instrument, ha ha. Now I just keep it safely locked away at home. I also use it a lot as a composing tool.
+-What kind of sounds do you use for the '''SynthAxe'''?
+Almost all the sounds are Oberheim synths. Great sounds.
+==[[Med Siktet Innställt På Total Kontroll (MusikerMagasinet 1996, Swedish language)]]==
+- The '''SynthAxe''' offered opportunities to express myself the way I always wanted to do, I immediately fell in love with it when I tried it. If the company had not folded, I probably would have still used it live today, and maybe stopped playing the guitar altogether. However, this was not the case, production stopped, and hence all support. It became too risky to use, and I only use it for recordings nowadays. I get the sounds from Yamaha DX-7 and Oberheim synths. The only new modules I have acquired are from Korg. More recently I have tried a possible replacement for the '''SynthAxe''', Starr Switch. It seems promising but nothing is decided yet.
+==[[Strong stuff from the brewery (EQ magazine 1997)]]==
+Another item not in use at the Brewery is a patchbay. "I don’t believe in them," Holdsworth declares. "Every time you run a signal through a connector, you screw up the sound. All the pieces of equipment in my studio are very mobile, so if I want to put an EQ or limiter on something, I can take it right to the source." Tape machines are also rented in for recording projects. "I’m a big fan of Mitsubishi 880’s," says Holdsworth, "and, of course, analog machines. I’ll sometimes rent an Otari. It depends on what the budget can go for." The guitarist owns a pair of Alesis ADAT machines, which he keeps in the studio mainly for writing purposes. The same goes for his modest MIDI rig, which is driven by Cubase software running on an old Atari ST computer, Holdsworth’s Synth Axe MIDI controller, which was his main axe a few years ago, is now principally used to input data to the sequencer for writing applications or to trigger the occasional synth pad on records. While Allan was once mad for MIDI, the M-word now plays a fairly minor role in his music. "I quit on the MIDI stuff completely for a while, but I just got back into it recently. I don’t do it a lot, though, and I don’t want to do it a lot anymore; although it’s cool for writing."
+==[[Allan Holdsworth (steveadelson.com 2000)]]==
+TCG: On your "orchestral" rubato type pieces are they pre-arranged or more improvisational?
+AH: Usually they’re completely improvised. It then goes into a piece of music that’s not improvised.
+TCG: Are you thinking melodically or harmonically?
+AH: I try to think about the whole thing. I use multiple delays on two Intelliflex units. They’re very flexible machines. I just set up a few multiple long delays and I feed the sound into the processor with a volume pedal. The '''SynthAxe''' is what got me into this sound.
+TCG: Do you still have the '''SynthAxe'''?
+AH: I have two, but I use them sparingly. I can’t play a regular guitar synth. The '''SynthAxe''' is not like a guitar. The notes are in the same places, but he feel is totally different. I could just forget I was supposed to be playing a guitar. I used to do clinics for '''SynthAxe''' and audience members would ask if I could make it sound like a Strat. It was pretty funny. They would want to play blues licks on it. It was quite hilarious. I never looked at it in that way. Quite the opposite.
+TCG: When did synthesizers enter the picture?
+AH: I tried the early Roland synth and loved the idea of the sounds, but it didn’t really work for me. Tom Mulhern at Guitar Player magazine recommended the '''SynthAxe''' and that was where that relationship started. Also guitar-wise, I played Charvels for a while, and later discovered the Steinberger. That was it. I just thought it was amazing. It was real hard to switch back to any other guitar. I became friendly with Ned Steinberger. He would send me the guitars without any frets, and then I would send them to a luthier by the name of Bill DeLap and he would flatten the fingerboard, and take out the relief. I like the neck to be absolutely straight. We would put Jim Dunlop 6000 fret wire in it. I had quite a few of these. Also, Bill built me a few baritone guitars. He made me a regular length wooden Steinberger and basically I’ve been playing that till I hooked up with Carvin for this new custom guitar. I play about 80% of the time now on the Carvin and 20% on the Steinberger. It’s still nice to switch back and forth. I love headless guitars. I think the new Carvin is an excellent guitar.
+==[[One Man Of 'Trane (Jazz Times 2000)]]==
+The '''SynthAxe''' was a particular favorite tool for Holdsworth through the ‘80s in that it helped him get closer to the legato sax style that he had been emulating since hearing Coltrane recordings for the first time back in the ‘60s.
+"Because I always wanted to play a horn, which is a non-percussive instrument, the guitar is essentially a percussive and I try and make it sound like it’s not," he explains. "But one of the things I always wanted to do was to be able to make a note and then change the whole shape of it after it sounded. You know, make it soft, make it loud, put vibrato on it, take it off, change the timbre of the sound, all after the note was played, which is not a very easy thing to do with a percussive instrument. And with the '''SynthAxe''' I have that ability because I can hook it up to a breath controller and I can do exactly that. I can make a note and change it and shape it in a totally different way than I can do on the guitar. And because the guitar gave me the chords -which I would’ve surely missed if I would have played the horn and not the guitar - eventually it gave me the combination of being able to play like a chordal instrument and a horn at the same time, and that was very appealing to me. It gave me a lot of textural possibilities that I didn’t have with guitar. And I kind of got engrossed in it. But I don’t feel exactly the same way about it now. I think of it more as something that I can use for extra color."
+He also plays headless Steinberger guitars, custom made headless guitars by Bill DeLap and makes sparing use of his '''SynthAxe''' synthesizer controller. He uses Stella guitar strings and is very pleased with his setup of two Yamaha DG-80 amplifiers with extension speaker cabinets in combination with a DG-1000 pre-amp.
+==[[The Sixteen Men Of Tain (musired.com 2000, Spanish language)]]==
+Tell me more about the '''SynthAxe'''.
+I am one of the few people that use it and perhaps one of the few people who have really appreciated what this instrument is. It is an instrument ahead of its time and it is a bit sad that has disappeared. Most guitarists don’t want to know anything of it. I used to do clinics, tried to find new sounds and people asked me to make it sounds like a guitar. It looked interesting to lend it to other people because they always tried to play guitar things with it, and I tried it like other instrument. The only thing it had in common with the guitar is that people knew where the notes were. But now it has disappeared. It’s a pity.
+==[[Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000)]]==
+I’m pleased to see there’s a lot of guitar soloing on the new record.
+"Well the last band album I did was ‘Hard Hat Area’ and we had Steve Hunt on keyboards and that fills out things sonically. On my solo records I would often play the '''SynthAxe''' to fill out some of that missing sound, but I’ve been consciously trying to lower the '''SynthAxe''' content, isolating it to one or two tracks on a record. So yeah, more guitar."
+Tell us about the '''SynthAxe''' synth controller. Guitarists never really understood it, did they?
+"No they didn’t. I suppose some of the things in there are old technology now, but what they achieved with that thing is still amazing. The thing that stood out for me with the '''SynthAxe''' was its difference. When I picked it up it was like I’d put on a space helmet and gone to another world. And when I put it down and picked up a guitar, I took the space helmet off and came back down to earth.
+"The Axe’s problem was guitar players. I remember in California when I was doing some demonstrations for them, I’d be playing it and I’d have the breath controller hooked up and everything. Some guy, inevitably, would come up and say: ‘But can you make it sound like a Strat?’ and you just want to beat him over the head with it. Then he’d pick it up and go straight to his blues licks!
+"When they went out of business I got so depressed. I was using it more than the guitar at one point and I thought, ‘You can’t do this or you’re gonna be trapped; it’ll break down and you’ll never get it fixed’. So I sold everything and emptied it out of my life. But in six months I was craving it again so I went on a quest to find another one. And I found one, but I never take it out of the studio; it stays at home."
+You’re one of the few players technically capable of taking really good samples of other instruments and playing them via the '''SynthAxe'''....
+"But the beauty of the '''SynthAxe''' was that it allowed me to go into that other place like in The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe. My two favourite synthesisers were Oberheim Xpanders and Matrix 12s, and the old Yamaha DX7. With the Oberheims I was always looking for a haunting, hornlike sound, but one which very obviously wasn’t a saxophone, a trumpet or something, which is pointless. The idea was to create a sound that I hadn’t heard before."
+==[[Allan Holdsworth interview (Music Maker 2003)]]==
+We’re almost 20 years after the invention of the '''SynthAxe''', but there’s not much new stuff coming out in that arena, except for some glitchy pitch-to-midi guitar synths from Roland. Do you see or expect anything new?
+I don’t know. I haven’t seen anything. I’ve never seen anything that came close to it. Nothing. Having the keys on it and just the whole way the whole thing worked was just really amazing. I felt like I could get inside it, it felt like part of me. And most of the other ones you know, they don’t work. You have to make it work with a guitar sound, mix the guitar sound with the synth sound and half the notes are missing, you know. With the '''SynthAxe''', that doesn’t happen.
+==[[Don’t you know? The Lost Words (Oneiric Moor 2003)]]==
+OF: Allan, since the eighties you have been the greatest Ambassador of the '''SynthAxe''', but it is only now you decide to make a complete album with it... Why ?
+AH: In the past I had thought about it, but I was focusing on Group projects, so although I wanted to do it, I just never had the opportunity. When I found myself with the time to do it between projects, I went for it.
+==[[Patron Saint (Guitar Player 2004)]]==
+Back when you were beginning to experiment with guitar synthesis, you lamented that guitarists tended to be closed minded to new sounds and approaches. Have we become more progressive since then?
+Things haven’t changed a whole lot. I loved the '''SynthAxe''' because it was still a guitar, but it took me into a whole other world of textures and sounds that I couldn’t do with a standard electric. And, you know, eight out of ten guitarists who saw me play it would come up and ask if I could make it sound like a Fender Stratocaster. Besides falling off the chair, I would wonder why anyone would spend all of their money on this thing to make it sound like a $500 guitar? So I think my view is that things are still the same.
+==[[A Conversation With Allan Holdsworth (Abstract Logix 2005)]]==
+Bill: Do you ever compose on keyboards?
+Allan: No, I can’t play piano at all. I like to work with the '''SynthAxe''', though.
+Bill: That’s strictly a composing tool for you at this point?
+Allan: Yeah, I use it in studio. And it’s a great instrument, but it’s falling apart now.
+Bill: Not very road-worthy?
+Allan: No, all the cables look like hell, with the plastic peeling off and everything. I keep having to wrap them with duct tape. And you have these big 20-pin connectors for it. It’s not something you want to go and mess around with a soldiering iron. I can’t see well enough to do that. You know, I’ve always been fascinated by electronics but when I opened that thing when I first got it, it currently have two of them. One actually is in perfect working order, the other one works for about 20 minutes. So you gotta be quick with that one. I love the keys on it. I think that was the real genius about the instrument. The trigger strings have got a slight time lag but the keys are instantaneous, just like playing a keyboard. It’s so beautiful to go and play a chord while you hold the keys down, and there’s one key for each string. When you hold a chord down you can take your hand off and move it to the next chord so you can get this more seamless, piano-like thing, which would be very difficult to do with any other kind of MIDI guitar controller. So I’m really fond of that thing but it’s going to die eventually. I’ll have to get a Roland guitar synth or something else to replace it. I’d really miss having a guitar synthesizer if this other one died.
+Bill: I wonder how you would deal with the fact that your acoustic wouldn’t be giving you that sustain quality that is so much a signature of your electric sound.
+Allan: Yeah, well, that’s true. I love to hear other people play acoustic guitar. I’m not very fond of hearing myself play it. But I think when I really quit playing acoustic guitar was when I got the '''SynthAxe''', because that just opened up this other door and I was like, ‘Well, I guess I can leave that other guitar behind completely.’ Because there was a period after I had been playing the '''SynthAxe''' for about a year, I was even getting frustrated with electric guitar. There was a point where I was actually close to making a decision to just play the '''SynthAxe''' and forget about the guitar.
+Bill: I remember that period when you were playing the '''SynthAxe''' almost exclusively. And you had that plastic tube that ran from the instrument to your mouth to help you shape the notes, like Peter Frampton or Stevie Wonder did in the ‘70s with the Talking Box.
+Allan: Yeah, I always wanted to play a horn and I loved that way that you could shape the note with that gadget. And because it was an analog device, you couldn’t record it in MIDI or anything. It was made by Niles Steiner, before he made the EVI or the EWI. I think it was called The Mouth Destruction. Basically, you can set it so that there’s no sound at all and as you blow it raises the volume and opens the filter, so it’s pretty organic. I was really getting into it. It was really great to be able to play a note and then make it loud and make it soft, then make it loud again...all the things that you can’t do with a guitar that you can do with a horn or a violin. So I was loving that.
+==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview! (Jazz Houston 2006)]]==
+MM: Are you still using the '''SynthAxe'''…
+AH: Only in the studio because they’re so rare now…they haven’t been made in several years. I have two of them…one works and one doesn’t. I guess if I tried I could track down someone from the original company to work on it for me, but really it’s too much stuff for me to carry around and try and travel with. I’m afraid of the reliability issue, too…I just cross my fingers and hope it keeps going in the studio.
+==[[No Rearview Mirrors (20th Century Guitar 2007)]]==
+TCG: Okay, that’s cool. Tell me, is it a 2-CD set called Then, that’s all Synth Axe, or Just for the Curious?
+AH: No, it’s called Against the Clock (Alternity Records).
+TCG: That’s the compilation.
+AH: Yeah, it’s a double CD. One of the discs has the majority of the guitar stuff on it and then the second disc is mostly Synth Axe but there are some guitar tracks on that side as well. We didn’t have room for it on the other CD so we kind of put a couple of guitar tracks at the end of the Synth Axe side. I did an album of my own called Flat Tire. Flat Tire is just a single, it’s not a double-album. It’s a single album and I did it right after my divorce. I didn’t really have a full-on studio set up then so it was...I lost my studio in the process. I was just doing some stuff in this house that I rented in San Juan Capistrano. So a friend of mine had kind of commissioned me to do an album for him but unfortunately, I couldn’t do it as a guitar album, so it ended up being a Synth Axe album,
+TCG: Well, divorces do that to us, Al, and we’re all pretty human at heart. Do you still have the Oberheim modules?
+AH: No, wow, this must be about twenty years ago now, when Synth Axe went out of business, I got really disappointed. I was really distressed about it because I was actually playing that more than I was playing the guitar and I did used to get a little bit afraid of it for that reason. I thought "Well, if this goes away and you focus on that and leave the guitar behind, then what’s going to happen when this thing breaks and they don’t make it anymore”. I did a stupid, impulsive thing, which is sold everything. I had two Synth Axes. I sold them both and I sold all my synthesizers and said "To hell with it! If they’ve gone away, what am I going to do? I didn’t want to get stuck playing an antique," so I thought "Well, the guitar is calling my name again so get back to that!” So sold them and then about six months later, I was really having some serious withdrawal symptoms and really missed it, and then friend of mine worked at Guitar Center, and he told me about this guy who had a Synth Axe and was trying to sell it and so I called up the guy up and actually, I didn’t have any money to buy it at the time. I traded him a couple of guitars for it so that’s how l ended up with the Synth Axe that have now. So it doesn’t go anywhere, it just stays in the studio. I just use it as a writing tool or for some soundscape stuff or whatever and I use it until it decides it doesn’t want to wake up anymore and then that will be the end of that (laughter).
+==[[Harnessing momentum (Innerviews 2008)]]==
+How do you communicate with the band when you present new music to them?
+I just play it for them. I’ll either record it and give them a CD or just play it during rehearsal and make suggestions about how I would like it to go, and that’s basically it. I recently started recording things again, which seems to be a good way of doing things. I also like to write things on the '''SynthAxe''' because I can record directly into a sequencer and play it back. It still works pretty well.
+So, the '''SynthAxe''' is still lurking out there somewhere?
+Yeah, but I just use it in the studio. It stays there. It’s probably going to die soon at some point.
+You’ve been saying that for more than 15 years. [laughs]
+True. [laughs] It’s not roadworthy, but it is still working.
+==[[The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008)]]==
+Will there be any '''SynthAxe''' on the new records?
+It’s mostly guitar, but there are a couple of '''SynthAxe''' things, just because I like to take advantage of the instrument while it is still running. Every time I turn it on I wonder if it’s going to start up.
+You have explored a lot of different timbres and approaches to phrasing with the '''SynthAxe'''. Has some of that orchestral sensibility found its way into your guitar playing?
+Yeah, the '''SynthAxe''' made me think a whole lot differently about the guitar, and at one point I was considering not playing guitar at all. I initially wanted to play a wind instrument, and when I used a breath controller with the Synth-Axe, it allowed me a certain amount of expression that I was unable to get from the guitar, particularly the ability to make notes loud and then soft and then loud again, and to change the sound of the note after it had been struck. On the guitar you can shape notes a little bit, but not as much. When the '''SynthAxe''' company went out of business, however, I decided that I’d better go back to the guitar.
+==[[Allan Holdsworth - Jazz/Fusion Guitarist (Musicguy247 2017)]]==
+R.V.B. - You toyed with electronics a lot and eventually started using the '''SynthAxe'''. It enhanced the sound of the guitar but did it change the way you approached playing the guitar?
+A.H. - I fell in love with that thing. I learned things from it... for sure. I took some things from the '''SynthAxe''' and applied them to the guitar. The thing about the '''SynthAxe''' is - it’s its own beast. It makes up sounds on its own. The beauty was, I could use synthesized patches or the breath controller to make horn like sounds, that I could never make on the guitar. I was able to use string patches and mic patches. It gave me a of flexibility that the guitar didn’t have. I really enjoyed playing with it.
+Allan Holdsworth Talks '''SynthAxe'''s, Jaw-Dropping Solos and More (Guitar World 2017)]]==
+An interesting phase of your career was your use of the '''SynthAxe'''. Do you still play it? —Galen Peterson
+Yes. It’s an exquisitely unique instrument. The '''SynthAxe''' enables you to achieve a whole world of sonic textures that you cannot get with a guitar. There was nothing like it before and nothing like it since. I’ve been playing it pretty regularly since Atavachron [1986]. Bill Aitken from Solid State Logic was the primary inventor. He was a guitarist but he wanted to be able to play synthesizer, so he came up with the idea of making this unusual-looking machine. I played one of the first ones and loved it. It makes no sound of its own because it’s essentially just a MIDI controller.
+People used to write notes on my amp, asking me to stop playing the '''SynthAxe''' and play the guitar instead. But now people often ask me, “We’d love to hear you play the '''SynthAxe'''—did you bring it?” I rarely play it onstage anymore because it’s too costly to take on the road and it requires a lot of equipment.
+==[[The Allan Holdsworth Interview (Musoscribe 2017)]]==
+Early on in your solo career, you became very closely associated with the '''SynthAxe'''. What piqued your initial interest in that instrument?
+It went back really far into my childhood, actually. Because I always wanted to play a horn or a violin or something where you could shape a note, as opposed to the guitar which is basically a percussion instrument. And I always tried to get the guitar to sound like it wasn’t a percussion instrument.
+When the '''SynthAxe''' came along, it opened the door to not only different textures and sounds that were unavailable on the guitar, but with the use of the breath control, I could do all the things that I wanted to do if I had been a horn player of some sort. I learned a lot from just playing that instrument. I still use it a lot in the studio; for the stuff I’m working on now, it has probably ended up on every track.
+You’ve explored other technological innovations, and you’re involved with some development yourself. Have you played any newer things, like the Moog guitar?
+Briefly, but it was a few years ago. But it was like a step backwards for me; if I have to go from the '''SynthAxe''', the thing is going to have to be absolutely, incredibly remarkable for me to want to make a jump.
+==[[Interview_with_Allan_Holdsworth_(Jazz_Italia_2005)]]==
+ALEX: In your opinion, why has no one else in the guitar synth world proposed a valid alternative to Roland's hexaphonic pickup, which is not very faithful, apart from SynthAxe and Yamaha, which have a virtually error-free system?
+ALLAN: I do not know ... because probably many guitarists, when I did some clinics, they asked me: "well, can you make it sound like a Strat?" and I would answer "why do you want to make it sound like a Strat? Why take a guitar synth with all these sounds and then play it like a guitar? You already have a guitar!" But I think that most guitarists want to play the guitar so they do not want to waste time managing it from a technical point of view. The reason why nobody has done another is because it is very complex to make the sound of a guitar. As with a keyboard, driving a synthesizer is simple, you just have to switch on a switch or not, with the guitar it's hard. Yamaha has made a great system, the strings are very low. The problem, in this case, is that if you do bending you may have precision defects since it is calculated at the bridge level ... The SynthAxe was completely different. Each key was separated on each string and the sensors were inside the strings themselves - they are like microphones so it makes sense the movement of the string as well as knowing how long the string is and then know when bend is possible if you play more towards the neck and how much if you play more towards the bridge. It's all programmed, a great machine. But they are very delicate, I have one that works well and one that does not work. At the beginning they were very reliable but now I would fear to take another one. [Machine back translated.]

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