But I get the guy getting praise from Steve Vai - he has the same vibe for me overall just less showmanship on stage. It’s just that personally that solo did nothing for me just like the solos Vai does. It’s pretty good technically and all in tune and rythm. I just don’t feel it.
I also listened to looking glass. I liked that as a song. Then the guitar solo started. Then I was “Oh nice. He can play slow and with feeling.” and then the fast scales started.
It feels like technical exercises, not music, to me.
[edit: I often notice that I’m still talking about Allan in the present tense, even though he’s been dead for three years now. I miss the geezer.]
Yes… in retrospect, I should’ve known you weren’t into jazz soloing.
The thing is, the fast scales have equal amounts of feeling… it just takes another kind of listening to “get into it”. It’s more like embroidery – you don’t look at the individual stitches, you look at the pattern. Bill Buford, who played with him on a couple albums, in fact used the term embroidery to describe his soloing style.
The reason why I brought him up is because he exemplifies the dilemma. Some guitarists are capable of reproducing his guitar work with good accuracy when transcribed, but none of them understands how the bleep he came up with them.
What sets Holdsworth apart from the rest is that, like John Coltrane, he doesn’t limit himself to what we think scales are. He does things that aren’t in any books (or weren’t until he did it), and, as Guthrie Govan says “he plays chords he invented, over scales he invented… he is basically a self-contained musical universe”… and that’s why many have said they don’t understand what he’s doing harmonically.
But it’s not just jazz – he also has spells where he taps straight into impressionism.
I think you will appreciate this little piece played on Synthaxe (no jazz and no guitar pyrotechnics in here, promise!), generally considered as one of his compositional masterpieces:
You are right. I liked that one better. It’s still unlikely for me to become a fan of him and I have no real regret that I didn’t know him before.
Yes, I know. And personally that feels like effort to me and that’s not how I want to enjoy music.
An effort I made when I was playing guitar - after I didn’t want to.
To me, it doesn’t. All it does is send more shivers down my spine than any oher guitar player ever did, and occasionally bring me to tears.
I think it has to do with the fact that we were raised on different music. I have been told that, at age 2, I was mesmerised by John Coltrane, but also by Debussy’s piano music – which I was fed by my mother, my grandad and one of my uncles.
I’m with you- Highway to Hell album(with the original singer) will always be my favorite.
Not really complex music, but still sounds great cranked up loud, driving with the windows down all these years later.
I can be 18 again (instead of 58)!
