SynthAxe: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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It was a strange-looking beast though - a plastic hulk of a thing with the neck sticking up at an angle. It had two sets of strings and the frets weren’t normally spaced; they hardly seemed to reduce as they progressed up the neck. Weird though it may have appeared, Allan saw the '''SynthAxe'''’s musical potential right away and has been its foremost user to date. Almost all the synthesiser parts on his last three albums - ‘Atavachron’, ‘Sand’ and his latest release, ‘Secrets’ - have been played on the Axe and listening to Holdsworth’s extraordinary accompaniments to his equally stunning soloing, you begin to realise the true extent of his knowledge, understanding and -maybe above all - musical intuition. | It was a strange-looking beast though - a plastic hulk of a thing with the neck sticking up at an angle. It had two sets of strings and the frets weren’t normally spaced; they hardly seemed to reduce as they progressed up the neck. Weird though it may have appeared, Allan saw the '''SynthAxe'''’s musical potential right away and has been its foremost user to date. Almost all the synthesiser parts on his last three albums - ‘Atavachron’, ‘Sand’ and his latest release, ‘Secrets’ - have been played on the Axe and listening to Holdsworth’s extraordinary accompaniments to his equally stunning soloing, you begin to realise the true extent of his knowledge, understanding and -maybe above all - musical intuition. | ||
==[[ | ==[[Guitarist's Guitarist (Jazz Times 1989)]]== | ||
Even the most cursory hearing of Holdsworth’s playing will reveal just how moved he was by Coltrane - the long, fluid lines, the extended improvisations, the phrasing which feels and sounds more like a horn than a plucked string instrument. "It was unconscious in the beginning," Holdsworth said. "But I think I was always trying to make the guitar into a less percussive instrument. That’s why I got interested in trying to use the amplifier to create sustained notes - so I could put the instrument into another realm of phrasing. Its not that I like distortion or anything like that for its own sake, its that I liked the way the amplifier could let [me] play long notes. Whereas, the normal jazz guitar - like say Joe Pass - is too percussive for me to be able to relate to it; I still love it and love to listen to it, but it wasn’t something that I felt; that’s why the '''SynthAxe''' was such a great discovery for me. It was like it was suddenly possible for long, flowing lines to be created by a guitar player; and now, with a breath controller, I can control the dynamics using breath like I would if I was playing a horn. So its kind of like a dream come true. Its like I’ve finally gotten around to playing the saxophone!" | Even the most cursory hearing of Holdsworth’s playing will reveal just how moved he was by Coltrane - the long, fluid lines, the extended improvisations, the phrasing which feels and sounds more like a horn than a plucked string instrument. "It was unconscious in the beginning," Holdsworth said. "But I think I was always trying to make the guitar into a less percussive instrument. That’s why I got interested in trying to use the amplifier to create sustained notes - so I could put the instrument into another realm of phrasing. Its not that I like distortion or anything like that for its own sake, its that I liked the way the amplifier could let [me] play long notes. Whereas, the normal jazz guitar - like say Joe Pass - is too percussive for me to be able to relate to it; I still love it and love to listen to it, but it wasn’t something that I felt; that’s why the '''SynthAxe''' was such a great discovery for me. It was like it was suddenly possible for long, flowing lines to be created by a guitar player; and now, with a breath controller, I can control the dynamics using breath like I would if I was playing a horn. So its kind of like a dream come true. Its like I’ve finally gotten around to playing the saxophone!" | ||
