Just For The Curious (album)

"Just For The Curious" is a CD that was included with the book of the same name and features the soundtrack from Allans instructional video from 1992. The album is not available separately or on streaming services. The band is Chad, Skuli and Steve, and they play some great music! “Proto Cosmos” was a live staple, and this version is in many ways as good as the original. Even Allan’s chordal demonstrations are sometimes enjoyable on their own as music. Allan was not pleased with the mix of these recordings. Due to an engineering mishap, the guitars and the drums were recorded on the same tracks in the studio, so Allan resorted to just leaving those tracks as they were when mixing the album.

Allan Holdsworth: An interview (Atavachron 1994)

CH: You were less than pleased with the REH video. Why were you less than pleased with the REH video, and the new book, "Just For The Curious"?

AH: Well, I wasn’t displeased with the book-I think the book turned out really good, and the book is just basically for me, one really good way of clarifying things that weren’t made so clear in the video. The biggest problem with the video was there was a huge problem on the video. What I wanted to do was to record the band live, like we did, but we wanted to... I wanted to record it live-to-24-track and then mix it, so... because I know that some guy sitting behind the desk [mixing console-JP] who’s never heard the band before, he doesn’t know where to put anything; he doesn’t know there’s a keyboard solo... how loud the chorus should be, or anything! So it was part of my deal was that we’d record the thing live, of course...

CH: Um-hmm.

AH: ... but to 24-track, and that I would be able to mix it afterwards. Well, they screwed up big time. They went to the expense of recording the all-live to 24-track, then when I got the tape at home, and put the bass up, I thought, "It sounds great"; put the drums up- "Sounds great"; put the keyboards up-"Sounds great." I put the guitar up and all I could hear was drums!!!

KK: What?

AH: They sub-grouped the drums to the guitar track. So when you listen to the video now, this is a very good example of why I’m extremely displeased with it is, that the way the video sounds now, there are no drum tracks up-none, whatsoever! None! All the drums you hear on the REH video are on the guitar tracks.

CH: So in other words, it was a massive engineering disaster.

AH: It was a massive engineering fuck-up of the highest magnitude. An d then, not only that... not only that. Not only did that displease me, but they turned ‘round to me and said, "Well, didn’t you check that?" and I said-because they know that I do my own engineering-but I’m on this side of the glass, playing live!!! I’m not on that side of the glass! All it takes is the guy-the engineer-to push a solo button and listen to the guitar. If I was in there and pushed "solo" and all I heard was drums...

KK: Was this thing widely distributed... the book and the video?

AH: Yeah. So, the book was a good deal for me, because I got to straighten a few things out that weren’t clarified in the, you know, the video. But... which I think they were, plus we were working with this guy, Aaron Stang, who was the guy who’s work was on the book, he was really great... he was really good.

KK: Do you have a copy of the book here?

AH: Yeah, I do.

KK: I’d love to see it at some point. I haven’t seen it anywhere.

AH: Yeah, sure. But you know, then they turned that thing around on me about the mixing, and it was completely impossible for me to know, because I was on [the wrong] side of the glass.

KK: You can’t be two places at once.

AH: And then the next big problem was I couldn’t take advantage of the sound of anybody else’s instrument, on the video. For example, the bass should have sounded better; the keyboards; the drums- everything would have sounded great. But I couldn’t, because I couldn’t process one thing without the other. I couldn’t make the keyboards sound [ like] a million dollars with this sad, lame-ass guitar sound, just simply because I couldn’t do anything to it.

CH: Buried in the drums.

AH: So I had to leave everything exactly the way it was. I couldn’t put echo on the guitar without putting echo on the drums. I couldn’t make the guitar brighter without making the drums brighter. It was a complete, total disaster. That’s why. So in answer to that, that seems to happen to me quite a lot, so, I’m really sorry that I did it. But, it’s out there. I’ll never do another one. [leans in to microphone] Never.

Links

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