Soloing

DRAFT

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (Beat Instrumental 1979) - § 1 reference coded [ 1.82% Coverage]

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"I liked quite a lot of classical music but was really more interested in people who could improvise. That was something that fascinated me. Luckily my father was a Jazz pianist and had quite a lot of records which gave me something to go on. When my Uncle gave me a Spanish guitar I dug those records out and listened to them."

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1980) - § 1 reference coded [ 2.25% Coverage]

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Did you try to duplicate your album solos onstage?

No.1 just try to be spontaneous. I mean, that was one of the silly things that U.K. wanted me to do: They wanted me to play the same solos. I said, "Sorry, no can do." Once a solo is done, try something else. In fact I really get worried if my live solos sound like the ones on the records.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (Guitar Player 1982) - § 1 reference coded [ 0.98% Coverage]

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How do you relate your solos to the chord changes? Do you consciously try to cover those chords?

Yeah. I break it down to find out what the chord structure is, what scales I can use, if I can superimpose things over the top such as triad. I generally experiment with it. There’s no set way. I don’t go about each tune thinking, "This is what I have to do." For me to be able to play it I have to be able to see it in my mind’s eye. I can’t play off a piece of paper. If I do, I’ve had it.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (Guitar magazine 1974) - § 1 reference coded [ 5.76% Coverage]

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There’s so much improvisatory freedom within the Softs’ music; when you’re playing one of those fast solos, how aware are you of what the rest of the band are playing?

I really don’t know. I’ve thought about that often, actually what am I hearing and what’s going on? I think at the time I’m conscious of most of the things that are happening, I try to hear what the other people are playing. Because if you’re fighting against them, it’s very hard. I’m sure everybody else in the band tries too. I have thought about that, but I can never be 100 per cent sure, because I never know what I’m thinking about at the time. I know that occasionally if I’m feeling ill or depressed about something and I’m not there with the rest of the band, it’s pretty awful. So I should imagine most of the time I hear what’s going on.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (International Musician 1981) - § 1 reference coded [ 2.02% Coverage]

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How much are your solos improvised?

ALAN: All of them are improvised. All players improvise their solos don’t they? No? (look of astonishment crosses face) Oh well, all of mine am.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth (Sound Waves 2012) - § 1 reference coded [ 3.70% Coverage]

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The thing I liked about jazz was that I had a fascination with improvising. I didn’t want to stick to any one style of jazz. I just liked being presented with a set of chord changes, and then trying to think of putting something interesting on top of it. I didn’t really focus a lot on the guitar. I listened to a lot of horn players, like Charlie Parker of course, and when I discovered John Coltrane, that was it. That guy changed my whole life. I couldn’t hear any lineage in his playing. Somehow, he seemed to be connected to the instrument in a way that I had never heard before. So I became really fascinated with John Coltrane, and I bought just about every record I could get my hands on.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth - Jazz Fusion Guitarist (Musicguy247 2017) - § 1 reference coded [ 2.68% Coverage]

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R.V.B. - When you set out to make your own music, was it a mixture of composition and improvisation?

A.H. - The compositions are usually vehicles for improvisation. You write a piece of music, then you take some form of it and manipulate it and use parts of it for playing solos. That’s kind of what improvisation is. It’s to write music that gives the soloist a vehicle to solo on. I’ve always loved that because that was the biggest challenge... trying how to play a half decent solo.

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth Remembers - In The Dead Of Night (Guitar and guitar shop 1999) - § 1 reference coded [ 11.79% Coverage]

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So it comes as no surprise that the solo on "In The Dead Of Night" was cut as just another improvisation from another time: "I never played a solo that wasn’t a complete improvisation, so if I did it again it wouldn’t be the same. That’s the part of music that I love. I always wanted to become a good improviser, and the challenge of the whole thing is trying to figure out different ways to play all these solos and chord sequences. It’s simply the way I approach the guitar."

Internals\\Allan Holdsworth’s New Horizons (Downbeat 1985) - § 1 reference coded [ 7.25% Coverage]

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At home he continues to practice "unusual scales or anything that I feel I’m really bad at. I practice playing over chord sequences, for example. I want to be able to reach a point where I can improvise without falling back on anything. Because sometimes when you play and you’re in a gig situation, you kind of dry up and you fall back on the things that you’ve learned - all the things that you’ve practiced. And that’s really when I feel bad, because then I’m just doing the parrot thing, I’m not really playing. I live for those few moments when I’m really playing and coming up with new things. "Some guys practice certain things so that they’ll be able to play them on a gig. I never do that because I would feel that I only got good at practicing. That way, I really didn’t learn anything new at all. So when I practice, I try and improvise and play something different on the same theme each time, as many variations as I can think of without ever repeating myself!’

Internals\\Any Key In The U.K. (Unknown publication 1978) - § 1 reference coded [ 4.13% Coverage]

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What kind of music were you listening to when you came down to London?

We’ll, all sorts really. From extremes to extremes. I listened to a lot of classical music, not classical guitar music so much, but a lot of violin music. I like jazz as well. I don’t like the word ‘jazz’ but I like anything to do with improvisation. Like, classical music is virtually just one guy’s improvisation but it’s not spontaneous.

Internals\\Harnessing momentum (Innerviews 2008) - § 1 reference coded [ 3.88% Coverage]

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What tend to be the biggest challenges when you’re writing?

The biggest problem is that I’ll start out trying to do something and never consider what it will be like to solo on the harmony. People often come up to me and say “It must be great when you write your own stuff because you can make things easy for yourself.” Unfortunately, that’s not true. A lot of the time, I have more problems with my own music than I do playing other people’s music, and it’s unintentional. Sometimes, I’ll start out and say to myself “Oh, you can write this tune and make it simpler. Go ahead and make life easier for yourself.” But it never happens. It always morphs into something else and I’m back figuring how I’m going to play over all these chords, so I gave up on that idea. I just let the music play out the way I hear it and just figure out all the scales and how I’m going to solo over it later. I make a little roadmap for myself and that’s pretty much it.

Internals\\No Record Contract, No Big Hoopla, But The Fans Have Kept The Faith For Allan Holdsworth (Guitar World 1982) - § 2 references coded [ 5.57% Coverage]

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"Single notes I hear like a long note. Then if it’s a flurry of notes, I tend to hear them not as one note after another but as a whole, from beginning to end, like seeing a color. If you play over one chord and superimpose another one over it, just to move it around a bit - I do that ‘cause I always like those things that are harmonically interesting, where you want to go, ‘What was that? Gotta hear that again!’ I’m trying to find that feeling. It’s slightly different from a ‘sheet of sound,’ in that most of the notes are important. I hear it like a line over a particular chord change."

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"There are people playing jazz now who are supposed to be improvising - really, they’re not, because they’re just applying the formulas to every piece of music they do. That’s not jazz to me; jazz means to really really try to improvise. To approach each song in the same way is over. So it means music has become formulated, that everybody plays the same cliched things over the changes and they play them the same way. That can’t be jazz anymore, because people are just playing what they’ve learned, what they’ve practiced. I feel like a rock guitar player, which is what I am, really, rather than somebody going through the motions. I’m playing to further things."

Internals\\No Secret (Guitar Extra 1992) - § 1 reference coded [ 2.24% Coverage]

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Q: So you’re talking about the opposite, not being held down to things that already happened on the instrument, but making new things happen with the creativity of the moment.

Allan: Yeah, but that’s not an excuse to play a lot of wrong stuff, like I do all the time, making mistakes all over the place. It’s just that I think that, ultimately for me, my dream is to be able to have enough control over the instrument so that I could actually play what I hear. I can’t, but with each stage or each phase down the road, I get a little better at it, not much but a little better.

Internals\\On The Level (IM&RW 1991) - § 1 reference coded [ 5.85% Coverage]

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IM - Would it be true to say then that you don’t consider yourself to be a Jazz player?

"People have different points of view. From my point of view I am because everything I write is a vehicle for improvisation and that is what Jazz is to me. However, I’m not involved in any form of the traditional aspect so that makes me not a Jazz musician to some people... many people think of it as a traditional thing so I always think you should clarify it, if it’s mainstream or trad., etc. But in essence the word means to be to be an improvisor. To me to really be able to play over something I can’t do it if I have to look over the paper, so the first thing I have to do is memorise it and then I’ve got a chance. I can’t look at a piece of paper because I won’t be seeing the whole thing. You can’t really get inside it. You’re just fluttering around outside the edge of it. You might come up with something but I usually have to memorise it which takes a while for me. When I write a piece I never think about how difficult it’s gonna be to solo over, I’m just writing the music. I think about them separately . I try and write the music and then, when it’s finished, I worry about how I am going to play over it."

Internals\\Pickups (Guitar Player 2000) - § 1 reference coded [ 22.03% Coverage]

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Although maintaining his identity is important to him, Holdsworth always pushes himself to evolve. "When I’m improvising, I always want to play something new," he says. "Even if I know a riff I played in the past was good, I purposely avoid going back to it. Change is crucial to me".

Internals\\The Allan Holdsworth Interview, part one (Musoscribe 2017) - § 1 reference coded [ 4.11% Coverage]

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To what degree is the music on your studio albums the product of careful composition and arrangement, and to what extent is it the product of improvisation giving way to creation?

When I write a piece of music, I start with just the composition itself. And I don’t worry about how difficult it might be to play solos over, or anything like that. I just let the composition go where I think it should go. And then I leave sections open for the soloist or whomever, to give them some space to play. I never wrote a composition that was just specifically for improvisation alone. Or if I did, I don’t remember what it was! I like the music to be dense harmony-wise, and then transformed. It works for me, anyway.

Internals\\The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever (Guitar Player 2008) - § 3 references coded [ 5.12% Coverage]

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What’s going on internally when you are improvising?

Usually the beginning of a solo is easy, because I’ve got an unlimited selection of different things that I can play for the first note. But once I’ve made that choice, then it goes to an unconscious place, and I’m not really thinking about it at all. I’m hearing this note, and then I hear the harmony, and sometimes I see the chords. It’s like looking at a Rolodex or an abacus. I can recognize distances between intervals. Then it’s just a matter of navigating from one place to another and squeezing in lines in interesting ways. All this stuff is just happening in real time, like instant composition.

That’s why I’ve always been against playing “licks.” Some people have boxes of little things that they just string together, and I don’t see how that can be considered improvising, because the only time you’re going to be improvising is when you make a decision to go from one lick to another. So, I always try to go in as many different directions as possible. Of course, we can all get trapped, and when that happens to me, then I don’t feel so good about playing. But sometimes I get loose of all the chains, and it seems like almost anything is possible.

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Has your approach to practicing changed over the years?

No, it’s exactly the same. I basically have three modes. One is where I just pick up the guitar and noodle around, almost completely brain dead. In the second mode I’m just studying. I choose something that I want to practice—a particular scale or odd fingering or whatever—and I play that and nothing else. And in the third mode I try to incorporate some of those things that I’ve practiced in the second mode into my improvisations. But that’s something that I don’t usually do live, because I’ve found that whatever I’m practicing in the second mode takes about two years to unconsciously show up in my live improvisation, and by that time it’s become so much a part of what I’m doing that I don’t even think about it. Because I think improvising should be just that, an unconscious release of all the things that you’ve learned—but without pushing.

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That said, I do wind up trying to force things on occasion, if something’s wrong or the sound is bad, and I find myself going back to my tool box to see if I can stretch something out. Then I feel really depressed, and usually have a bad gig, but I have to keep going. On a good night, however, ideas just keep coming. So I just try to get one or two of those nights a year, and I’m happy with that [laughs].

Internals\\The Open End (Boston Sound Report 1988) - § 1 reference coded [ 12.08% Coverage]

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BSR: Do you do your solos in one take, or do you "punch and splice"?

AH: No, I don’t edit. I’ve done solos with other bands that were punched in. Now I just try to do more solos; I try to do five or six takes until I get the one I like.

BSR: When you’re soloing, are you thinking of the solo note by note, or do you create an outline in your mind?

AH: I’m thinking of the chord sequence and what I can do with it creatively, what notes I can play over the chords. It’s just normal stuff. I try and do it a different way. I don’t want it to come out sounding formulated, or like someone else’s formulation. I want to get my own playing up to a certain level, or to try to get better. Well, for example, a lot of guys come up to me and say, "you can’t possibly be a great improviser if you have never played certain kinds of music."

I don’t think that’s true at all. For example, you can’t say that to an Indian musician. Try telling an Indian drummer that he can’t improvise just because he’s never played “Stella by Starlight."

I want to be freer in the way I hear things harmonically. I do the same things other people do, but I try to do them in a different way. I try to figure out all the ways I can play different scales or different chords to make them sound different. Essentially, they may be the same - I may be using the same scales that other people would use over those chords. I try to juggle the notes around in such a way that the order in which they are played makes it sound different.

Internals\\The Reluctant Guitarist (Jazz Journal 1992) - § 1 reference coded [ 3.19% Coverage]

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‘Sometimes I’ll just play off the different triads. Other times I’ll use like two together, like two sets of triads joined together. Like a D minor and an Eb major or something. The whole step-half step scale is interesting too, because although it has a kind of horrible sound most of the time, especially the way most people play it, it’s an unbelievable vehicle if you start jumping things around on it. It’s almost so that people wouldn’t recognise what it was. I mean the way it sounds if you take different intervals, it’s quite a fascinating thing, that.

Internals\\The Unreachable Star (Guitar World 1989) - § 3 references coded [ 8.82% Coverage]

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GW: "Strangher," (sic) a boogie you recorded with Tempest, represented perhaps one of the first times such outside notes were played tastefully in a rock context. How did that develop?

HOLDSWORTH: I improvise with the same bunch of notes as everybody else, but just try to kind of rearrange the order of them, that’s all. I don’t do it very well, but I try to analyze the structure of the piece of music, and be creative harmonically It doesn’t often happen, but I try. My ultimate goal is to be able to really improvise over anything; I’d love to be able to improvise over all the old bebop tunes, but I don’t want them to sound like they were coming from there, because somehow there’s something about improvisation that dictates to me that no one should take something that everybody else has done, like a certain formula, and reapply it. I’d rather try and formulate my own theory on how I hear it, as opposed to how someone else heard it. I think that’s why I do get a little misunderstood. Harmonically misunderstood. That’s all I ever cared about: just being able to play a solo, you know, all I ever want to do is play a good solo [laughs].

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GW: I guess we all go through our own private journey as far as learning and developing, but in the saturated musical environment we choke around in today it’s close to impossible to start from scratch. How does the study of others - meaning attempting to capitalize on the distance they’ve already covered - figure into a healthy growth as a musician, and not just as a guitarist?

HOLDSWORTH: To me, studying - meaning studying yourself and what you think you’re bad at, or trying to learn something more about harmony or chords or whatever - is something that can be done to good results. But studying a person is completely wrong - it shouldn’t ever be done. Listening to them and being influenced by them, yeah. I’m influenced by everybody I hear. When I listen to Scott Henderson’s album, it really affects me. I’m motivated by the chords he’s playing. I try and retain the attitude through which I realize that there is something else, and there’s got to be more and more that I can learn to make my playing better. But I would never sit down and try and figure out anything that they did. Like I said, I’d like to become a really good improviser so that I can play on anything, but in my own way without having utilized things that I just picked up from other people. Maybe I’ll capitalize on the essence or the heart of it, but not so much specifically what he had in mind; that’s something that’s unique to that person, like the way the guy looks. To me, playing like somebody else is just as ridiculous as dressing up in drag, you know? What for? I was born a guy, I wasn’t born a woman. This shape, this color, it doesn’t matter. You just have to find something within yourself and develop that.

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GW: Why do you think you’re afraid?

HOLDSWORTH: I know that I won’t like what I do. I’m scared that I’m going to be stuck with something that’s not going to make it, so I’m afraid of it. I really want to do it, but I’m scared of it at the same time. I just try and be as creative as I can at any particular time, and sometimes it doesn’t feel like I am. Sometimes, I feel like I’m not creating anything. I’m scared of the day that I’ll go in there and play a solo like one I’ve already done.

GW: I’m still curious as to why that bothers you so much. Don’t you think that a musician’s style is defined by consistency in his vernacular?

HOLDSWORTH: No, style is different. Style is just a way of somebody doing something, but a style in itself doesn’t mean much, really. To have one is fine, but the thing is that I have to keep hearing a progress in my playing, harmonically I just want to keep hearing a musical growth in my solos, and I’m scared that I won’t. Luckily, when I finish a project, I can usually hear some kind of progress. I mean, harmonically speaking - the internal things, not the external things. Not so much the way someone does something, or a tone or anything like that, but actual substance of it. I just want to continue to grow musically and play more intriguing or interesting harmonic ideas That’s the part that I’m afraid of - that I’ll get to a point where I just can’t soak anything else in. I don’t mean that what I’ve soaked in is anything substantial at all, I just mean that I might get to a point where I have to say "Well, you know, I can’t hold any more water so I’ve got to get off."

GW: Do you experience that anxiety while you’re playing or when you’re hearing yourself play on a record?

HOLDSWORTH: Sometimes I experience it while I’m playing because I’m conscious of my limitations, but mostly, if I’m feeling relaxed and I’ve been playing for a few hours, then it’s easier for me to play ideas, because I won’t be so worried about my hands. For the first few hours that I start soloing in the morning, sometimes I feel that my limbs are in the way, that there’s no connection between what I want to play and what my hands are doing. And then the more I play, the more connected it becomes, and the easier it is to get your hands to do as they’re told.

As you learn something, it unlatches a door to another room that’s full of all the other stuff you didn’t know about before. You knew it existed, but you didn’t know how to tap into it, and it goes on and on and on. A better analogy would be... When you get to the top of one hill, you can see that every hill ahead is bigger than the one you just climbed, so you really know that you can’t get anywhere.

GW: You may be painting a pretty bleak landscape here.

HOLDSWORTH: Well, each person can only absorb so much in a lifetime, and some people can absorb more than others, but that’s why a lot that has to do with music is passed on, just because no one guy comes along and does everything all at once.

I only speak with regard to soloing, be cause that’s the thing about music that I’m most intrigued by. I’ve always wanted to be able to play good solos. And I never can. I never can get what I want - and probably nobody ever does - but at least I learn from each album and year that goes by this stuff that I didn’t know before. And, as I said, this has nothing to do with style - they don’t even really connect. One thing is my ability to play through sets of changes and try and come up with something inventive. I didn’t learn music in a normal way inasmuch as my ultimate goal was, and is, to he able to solo well over anything. I mean, that’s always been my dream. I want to he able to improvise over any changes - bop changes or anything - but I want it to sound like it came from somewhere else. I don’t want to he beaten by the changes, that’s all. Playing over changes is the big challenge, but I don’t want it to sound like it came from bop.

GW: Can the two things work exclusively?

HOLDSWORTH. Oh, of course! I mean - try telling an Indian musician he can’t improvise! [laughs] You don’t have to do one to be able to do the other, but it might be more difficult. I’ve probably bitten off a whole lot more than I can chew; but that’s my goal: I don’t want the changes to eat me up.

Internals\\Whisky Galore (Guitarist 2000) - § 1 reference coded [ 5.42% Coverage]

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When you solo, do the notes flow like a stream of unconscious thought?

"Improvisation is the musician drawing from everything he’s learned so far The things I’m practising now, it may be a year or two before they’re unconsciously coming out in my playing. Obviously you’re conscious of the harmony, but it’s an unconscious release of all the things you’ve ever learnt, played over a particular harmonic backdrop. But if your girlfriend runs away with your best buddy and you’ve got that on your mind when you’re on stage, you’re probably not going to play your best - unless you’re really happy about the event!"