Saxophone: Difference between revisions

From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]==
==[[Allan Holdsworth (Guitarist 1985)]]==
Your style is very unique, did you arrive at it by listening to other players, or was it purely what you heard in your own head?

No, no, I listened to lots of different things, but I tried just to draw from the things which I found particularly moving, and which made me feel something. Sometimes I will be in awe of something I hear which is amazing in a technical sense but, usually, it’s how emotively it connects with me; like listening to Michael Brecker or Keith Jarrett when you get that feeling up your back and your hair stands on end. That’s the feeling that I try to extract.


When I first started playing I tried to copy people, but soon realised that it didn’t get me anywhere; I didn’t seem to be learning anything at all. So I decided I had to try to find out what the essence, the core or the motivation behind those people was, and that’s the kind of thing I’m looking for; just a way to express myself through an instrument. It could have been anything. It just turned out that it was the guitar.




I didn’t really want to play the guitar, I wanted to play '''saxophone''', but it just so happened that I didn’t get a '''saxophone''', I got a guitar and that’s where it all started. That is why this SynthAxe thing is so interesting to me, because for a long time now I’ve been very interested in the compositional side of things. One of the things I’d really love to do is get an amazing band together but not be a player in it at all, just a writer. I’d love to write a piece of music that a set of musicians could embellish. The themes and the chord structures would be fixed, but the rest of it would be very open to interpretation. In the framework of a band you can tell the players roughly how it is, they know what the bar lengths are and they can take it from there, without ever getting lost or the music becoming something else.


I didn’t really want to play the guitar, I wanted to play '''saxophone''', but it just so happened that I didn’t get a '''saxophone''', I got a guitar and that’s where it all started. That is why this SynthAxe thing is so interesting to me, because for a long time now I’ve been very interested in the compositional side of things. One of the things I’d really love to do is get an amazing band together but not be a player in it at all, just a writer. I’d love to write a piece of music that a set of musicians could embellish. The themes and the chord structures would be fixed, but the rest of it would be very open to interpretation. In the framework of a band you can tell the players roughly how it is, they know what the bar lengths are and they can take it from there, without ever getting lost or the music becoming something else.


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What advice would you give to anybody starting out playing jazz, or even to someone who is quite proficient at rock guitar, but would like to extend their horizons?


What advice would you give to anybody starting out playing jazz, or even to someone who is quite proficient at rock guitar, but would like to extend their horizons?




As I mentioned before, I didn’t really want to play the guitar, I wanted to be a '''saxophonist
As I mentioned before, I didn’t really want to play the guitar, I wanted to be a '''saxophonist'''


==[[...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before... (Cymbiosis 1986)]]==
==[[...Where No Guitarist Has Gone Before... (Cymbiosis 1986)]]==