allan Holdsworth: tribute Lesson

Gear used: Knaggs Choptank, Friedman BE OD, Boss SD-1 (modded by pedalmods.com), MXR Carbon Copy Bright, Vox AC15C1

The recent unexpected loss of Allan Holdsworth has left a very big hole in the world of jazz/rock/fusion guitar. Actually, it’s hard to know which category to write first, because Allan’s influence spread so far and wide. Players as diverse as Eddie Van Halen, John McLaughlin, Alex Lifeson and Frank Zappa (to name but a few) all regarded him as one of the greats, though Allan himself saw the guitar as a vehicle for musical expression, rather than an end in itself. His unique phrasing and harmonic sensibility would certainly suggest this, as did his use of unconventional instruments, from headless Steinberger guitars to the futuristic SynthAxe MIDI/breath controller.

This feature will attempt to scratch the surface of Allan’s overdriven legato-soloing approach, plus explore some close voiced, or ‘cluster’, chords that he used to such great effect. You will need two very different sounds to play these examples. The first chord section is completely clean, though some modulated delay adds a more ethereal quality – a bit of extra reverb and compression was added afterwards to help it along, too, so you may want to consider those. Allan would switch to a stereo pair of dedicated clean amps (he called them his “chording” amps) for parts like this. The solo section is overdriven but with the gain carefully set to facilitate legato while not adding lots of handling noise. I found a combination of ‘stacked’ overdrive and distortion (in that order) both set to a fairly low gain, but combined to give a little more sustain, seemed to give a nice balance and midrange.

As I said before, I can only hope to scratch the surface here, but listening to Allan’s playing again brought back some happy memories, which I’ve tried to channel into this mini piece. Hope you enjoy and see you next time.