Holdsworth Radio Interview (1990): Difference between revisions
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==ChatGPT edited transcript, not complete== | |||
For Intima Records and Steinberger guitars, this is XXX with Allan Holdsworth in his home studio and beautiful Tustin, California on a sweltering hot day in the middle of July. | |||
We're going to talk with him a little bit about his new internet album "Secrets," which will be coming out shortly, and discuss his playing, some of his techniques, and recording methods. | |||
Q: Did you mix the album right in here? | |||
AH: "Yeah, I mixed it right over there at that console that no one can see," Allan replied. | |||
Q: Earlier, when we were talking, he said that this time you were able to do some things in terms of mixing that you hadn't been able to do on your earlier albums. Just exactly what did you do? | |||
AH: "Well, usually it's a money problem. When you're going to the studio and you're mixing an album, you have a set amount of time to do it, and you usually try to do it as quickly as you can. Quite often I've made a lot of mistakes, so then we finished up having to remix a song. You run into many issues every week, okay, so you often don't get exactly what you want. But nobody ever does. This time, doing it at home, well, I don't have the same equipment as a lot of the really awesome studios. The thing is that I can make up for it by the amount of time that I can take on the mixing. For example, if I started mixing one song instead of just getting it ready to look, then putting it down onto the track, I'd spend more time listening to it. I'd get a rough mix or a pretty good mix and make adjustments for it. I'd make cassettes to play in the car, play it at my friend's house, and test it on a lot of different systems. Therefore, you know, being able to go back to the board and make the necessary changes is something they give me. It was a big thing for me in this work, | |||
Q: and as a result, you probably must feel pretty good about it, having heard it both on the studio monitors and, as you said, in a variety of environments. | |||
AH: I think it turned out good with regard to that. You can listen to it in a lot of different environments, and it sounds pretty good. I was quite pleased, as pleased as you can be with anything that you can feel. | |||
Q: Speaking of that, I mean, with each successive album, it seems that critics and fans alike are always reaching for the dictionary for new adjectives to try and find one more superlative that they can use to describe your playing. How do you feel about the way you play? | |||
AH: "Well, I'm never a hundred percent happy with anything that I do, but I think that's normal," Allan responded. "I just try to do the best I can at any point in time. You know, what keeps me going is that if I look back to an older album, I can..." | |||
AH: Hearing some progress, which up till now, thankfully I can, and that's enough inspiration for me to keep going. If I listen to an album and always hear growth and improvement from the previous ones, that's about when I might consider taking up engineering full-time and putting the guitar away. | |||
Q: But let's take a listen to the first track from your new album, "Secrets." It's called "Joshua." | |||
Q: "I just heard a little bit of 'Joshua' from Allan Holdsworth's new album on Intimate Records called 'Secrets.' Let's talk a little bit about the actual guitars, the stuff that you're playing on that. As a musician, I'm kind of interested in how you go about getting the sound that you do, what kind of equipment you use, and your mental approach to achieving the sounds both on leads and during the rest of the music." | |||
AH: "I think most people have a kind of sound in their head, you know? Like, that's what I like to think of it as. And for me, with the guitar or anything else, it's just like a quest to try and get closer to that. For this particular track, it was pretty straightforward in terms of equipment. I used a Steinberger guitar, which I use exclusively now; I don't use wood guitars anymore. I also used the 50 Caliber Boogie, and that was it. It's a pretty simple setup for this particular track. Sometimes, I record with processing if it's important to the sound, as it has been on some of the last recordings." | |||
AH: "But with the lead guitar and solo sound, I usually like to try and get it as good as I can and then move on. As for the mental approach to going into a studio and recording, as opposed to playing live, how do you select..." | |||
Q: How do you set yourself up to get that one perfect solo or get as close to it as possible, especially when you can't feed off the energy of the audience like you can when you're on a stage? | |||
AH: That's always really hard. I mean, recording poses totally different problems for me, especially if it was done in an innovative situation. When you play things live, like some of the tracks we did in the past, they somehow always seem easier than when you start to go in and overdub something because it's really difficult to make it sound like it was part of the whole event. So, I really listen to the basic track a lot in an overdub situation until I actually know exactly what everybody else is doing. That way, I find it easier to stay on the same line and understand where all the little things are going to be, and I try to make it sound as natural as possible. | |||
[Music] | |||
Q: "We just heard a little bit of 'Spokes' from Allan Holdsworth's new album, 'Secrets.' This time you wrote about half of the compositions on the album. Before, you were the primary composer. Does that mean you're getting out of the composing business and more into the playing, or are these really two different sets of skills that are complementary?" | |||
AH: , "For the first question, I think I just liked a few of the tunes that some of the guys had written, and I always like to experiment with those things. In the particular pieces of music that I did like, I felt that they would sound a lot different on the album just because of the personnel. I figured it would come out with a sort of uniformity, which it had..." | |||
AH: It's basically because I liked the pieces that the other guys had written, and I wanted to give them an opportunity to write. It didn't start as a deliberate decision, like saying, "Well, this time I'm not going to write everything." It was just that Gary played me a tune that I really liked, and it fit nicely. Then Steve had two tunes, one of which made it, and we'd done it live in Joshua. We actually didn't do that tune live. I liked both of those tunes, and Chad had written a piece that I really liked too. So it was just more or less that I liked them, rather than saying, "Well, I couldn't be bothered to write any music." I felt that I didn't have enough music. | |||
Q: And when it comes to playing, a little bit about playing the SynthAxe. I mean, how is it different from playing other guitars, and was it hard to learn? | |||
AH: "Well, it's completely different, and that's one of the things I really like about it. I guess I've mentioned it a few times in magazines and things I've done before that I never really wanted to play the guitar in the first place; it just kind of happened. When I first started playing the SynthAxe, it was a real big emotional experience. It felt better to me than the guitar. It felt like I could develop a relationship with the instrument that allowed me to express myself more than I could with the guitar because I'd always wanted to play a wind instrument, and using the breath controller on the SynthAxe gave me that kind of ability. So I really love the thing. But as far as it being like a guitar, it's very much unlike a guitar. I guess that's why a lot of guitar players don't like it. So I guess now, in a sense, then..." | |||
Q: "You're more of a multi-instrumentalist now than you were a few years ago?" | |||
AH: "Well, only in the sense that it's only through the SynthAxe program. I'm definitely not a multi-instrumentalist. It's just that obviously, anything that you've learned on the guitar, being that it's a stringed instrument, the notes on particular frets or whatever, and I can, you know, I still understand that on the SynthAxe. That part doesn't change, which is great. But the way the instrument feels is completely different." | |||
Q: "Let's go back and listen to a little bit more of the record. This track is called 'City Nights.' We're back in the Tustin studio of Allan Holdsworth with Helen Howe. 'Secrets' is going to be coming out this August." | |||
Q: "We just heard a little bit of 'City Nights,' and you've been at this for quite some time now, haven't you?" | |||
AH: , "Yes, it's the sixth album. Yeah, six and a little bit. I came first in 1979. I was recruited. 'I.O.U' was recorded, I think, in 1980, and I think it came out in 1981 or somewhere around there. Then we did the 'Road Games' album for another label that we won't mention – a hideous record. Then there was 'Metal Fatigue,' 'Sand,' 'I.O.U. Live,' 'Atavachron,' and 'Wardenclyffe Tower,' and then 'Secrets.'" | |||
Q: Helen asked, "What do you see, other than, of course, the band and yourself, as being the sort of common thread? Or what is it that ties it all together if you were to take a day of your life and listen to it all chronologically? What would you say about the progression that you've made as a musician and as a composer?" | |||
AH: , "I don't know, other than the fact that I think I made some progress. But other than that, I wouldn't know exactly specifically what it was because I think each individual is an individual, and sometimes they're not aware of what..." | |||
AH: "Sometimes they're not aware of what makes them themselves. So, all that I try to do is just kind of follow my heart through the whole thing. If I feel like I should do this, that's what I do, and if I feel like I should do that, that's what I feel. I guess I've always felt that way about music – I just try to the best of my ability to keep moving, you know, keep changing, moving from the concept of the individual to the group." | |||
Q: Helen asked, "This last track that we're about to hear, '54 Duncan Terrace,' doesn't feature you as prominently as many of the other tunes on 'Secrets.' How come?" | |||
AH: "Well, it's kind of unintentional because there was basically only one solo section in the piece, and I wrote the piece for a friend of mine who died a few years ago. He was a really great guitar player, his name was Pat Smythe, and all the pieces that he used to compose were always very pretty or very melodic, soft kind of pieces. So, I wrote this kind of in memory of him. He was, like I said, a piano player. After I started listening to the basic track when we did it in the studio, I thought that Alan Pasqua was tossing in piano flair, and I just asked him if he'd like to play on the track, and he did. He played the bulk of the solo, and then I played this very short solo section at the end." | |||
The segment concluded with Helen saying, "From Allan Holdsworth's album 'Secrets,' '54 Duncan Terrace.'" | |||
[Music] | |||
Q: "We're back in the Tustin Studio with Allan Holdsworth, where we've just heard '54 Duncan Terrace' from his new album 'Secrets,' which is going to be out this August on Intimate Tapes and Records and compact discs. And gosh, probably at some point, we'll have a little computer disk that we can play it as well through..." "Your Mac a little ways off. We were talking during the break about guitars, and you said something really interesting about Steinberger. You mentioned they have something very special about them, and I'd like you to elaborate on that a bit." | |||
AH: "Alright, the very first time I played a Steinberger, I got an incredible feeling from it. I just loved the thing, and it made me feel like I felt when I first picked up the very first guitar. You know, there's a kind of resurgence of energy. I felt really, oh, I wanted to play the guitar again, you know, after I got this Steinberger. It was an interesting thing to happen. I loved it because of the creative aspect too because almost everybody else for the last 20 years has just been a copy of some form of a Fender or a Gibson. I think that the Steinberger is the only truly significant development in electric guitars for the last 20 years. Not only that, but the thing just sounds great to me. I love it, and it's the only guitar I play." | |||
Q: Helen continued, "If you don't mind me putting you on the spot a little bit, if you were going to give some advice to someone who is currently practicing and playing, and perhaps aspiring someday to become a professional musician, what advice would you give them?" | |||
AH: "Well, actually, I was talking to Gary Husband about this a few weeks ago, and he made a very keen observation. He said that everybody starts out when they first start playing with something very special of their own, and what happens is they risk losing it. The key is to keep it, rather than being totally engrossed in what other people are doing, try to figure out what is unique about themselves and nurture that. I think it's really great to be inspired by people, and obviously, I'm still inspired by lots of musicians and what I hear. But I try not to let that kind of infiltrate what I really want to do myself. I try to absorb the quality aspect of it but not actually mimic it. I think that's the best possible advice I could give to anyone." | |||
Q: Helen concluded, "Well, thank you very much for your time. On behalf of Steinberger Guitars and Intimate Records, I'm XXXSayin TyrannyXXX. We've been speaking with Allan Holdsworth, and his new album 'Secrets' will be out in stores this August. So, in addition to those you're carrying right now, if you'd like to hear the entire thing, we encourage you highly to find your way down there and get a copy for yourself." | |||
[Music] | |||
==YouTube transcript== | |||
The following is the raw output from Youtube's auto-transcription function: | The following is the raw output from Youtube's auto-transcription function: | ||
