Saxophone: Difference between revisions
From Allan Holdsworth Information Center
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==[[No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)]]== | ==[[No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992)]]== | ||
Q: Did your parents push you to take piano lessons?
Allan: My father tried to get me interested in the piano, but it was really obvious that I had no interest in it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the sound of it, it was just that I don’t have any interest in that kind of instrument. Then I really started to like the '''saxophone''', Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, who I heard on the Miles Davis albums. When I heard John Coltrane, I was really moved by it. Then I started going down to the record shop every Saturday-I’d go down in to town and buy an album, and I started buying all these John Coltrane albums. It was only four or five months after I discovered John Coltrane that I read in the paper that he died. It was a real shock because I guess when you’re young and you’ve just discovered somebody, I felt like I really knew him. I just felt like he had a whole lot more left. | Q: Did your parents push you to take piano lessons? | ||
Allan: My father tried to get me interested in the piano, but it was really obvious that I had no interest in it. It wasn’t that I didn’t like the sound of it, it was just that I don’t have any interest in that kind of instrument. Then I really started to like the '''saxophone''', Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane, who I heard on the Miles Davis albums. When I heard John Coltrane, I was really moved by it. Then I started going down to the record shop every Saturday-I’d go down in to town and buy an album, and I started buying all these John Coltrane albums. It was only four or five months after I discovered John Coltrane that I read in the paper that he died. It was a real shock because I guess when you’re young and you’ve just discovered somebody, I felt like I really knew him. I just felt like he had a whole lot more left. | |||
Q: Were you playing guitar at this point?
| Q: Were you playing guitar at this point?
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Allan: No, because you can’t. Some of the things I’ve tried to do, like changing the sound of the note after you’ve played it, is unbelievably hard to do on guitar. Where as on a bowed instrument, like a violin or a '''saxophone''', it’s really quite easy to shape the note after you’ve started it. With the guitar, percussive instrument that it is, the note is essentially over once you’ve picked it. I have always tried to use equipment and amplifiers where I can change the vowel sound, to change an "ooh" to an "aah", and stuff like that. For the solos, I wanted it to sound more like a horn, and for the chords, I use a volume pedal to sound more like a keyboard, and not so chinky. And I hate strumming, the sound of strumming drives me nuts. It’s the same thing about how the guitar is kind of not the right instrument for me, but I’m too old to start worrying about another one. | Allan: No, because you can’t. Some of the things I’ve tried to do, like changing the sound of the note after you’ve played it, is unbelievably hard to do on guitar. Where as on a bowed instrument, like a violin or a '''saxophone''', it’s really quite easy to shape the note after you’ve started it. With the guitar, percussive instrument that it is, the note is essentially over once you’ve picked it. I have always tried to use equipment and amplifiers where I can change the vowel sound, to change an "ooh" to an "aah", and stuff like that. For the solos, I wanted it to sound more like a horn, and for the chords, I use a volume pedal to sound more like a keyboard, and not so chinky. And I hate strumming, the sound of strumming drives me nuts. It’s the same thing about how the guitar is kind of not the right instrument for me, but I’m too old to start worrying about another one. | ||
Q: Isn’t the attraction to amplified guitar the fact that it can afford so many different sounds and colors, that you can get a lot of different variances in tone quality, probably more so than on a violin or '''saxophone'''? | Q: Isn’t the attraction to amplified guitar the fact that it can afford so many different sounds and colors, that you can get a lot of different variances in tone quality, probably more so than on a violin or '''saxophone'''?
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Allan: Essentially you can’t though. There’s no way that you can do that with a guitar what some guy can do with a bow. I know that from the Synthaxe, because I can do things on the Synthaxe that would be completely impossible on the guitar. I can play a note using a vibrato on it, make the note disappear, make the tone go soft, make the tone go hard again right away after that, so the bottom of the decay is almost gone, the envelope is gone, and then you open it right up again. You can’t do that on guitar. Not even with a volume pedal. The note isn’t there anymore, it’s decayed. I know what you’re saying. You can do a lot with amplifiers and processing, which I’ve tried to do, but it’s not a real substitute. | |||
==[[No Secrets (Facelift 1994)]]== | ==[[No Secrets (Facelift 1994)]]== | ||
