Those scales are saying: WTF?

Talk Holdsworth scales about Allan.

When scales go to sleep, they check their closets for the ghost of Allan Holdsworth.

I think Holdsworth's approach to chords was inspired by The I Ching, Vedic Astrology, and Quantum Mechanics. Computer scientists attempted to program his understanding into Big Blue, but Big Blue blew up.

Modes learn Allan Holdsworth.

I feel totally more stupid and inept after watching that video. I`ll just stick to bar chords.

IntotheFire I can totally relate and agree!! lol

Wayne Iredale Allan is from another galaxy far far away......

IntotheFire...LOL! I just want to learn one little legato lick... it's just not happening :o(

Funky' Furballs I share your pain man!!!

Exactly!

Allen should have studied real music theory. He is trying to reinvent the wheel but it doesn’t work.

@@vanguard4065 It worked quite well for him. He didn't need it to work for anyone else. Not to mention, his "wheel" is his music theory, which is not the same as conventional music theory.

@@vanguard4065 real music theory? wtf is real in arts

@@verresmilliterres it worked for him which is why his music is simple and senseless.

I shit myself halfway through

😂

Been thinking like him my whole life but literally just found out about it him, ashamed.

classic reply very funny

I feel I have no clue what he is in about but I do know he is significant in musical history.

More like an Altered Universe (U Alt). Or an Augmented Universe ? (U#5)

I'd say it's FRETBOARD theory, applied to music theory

Brad Maiani exactly...

That's Holdsworth in a nutshell , otherworldly playing

Exactly its like the term think outside the music theory box. Im a classical player and I play metal. I understand Bach , but Allan is really in his own league,both music theory and technique no one literally plays like him. No disrespect to Bach he is an 18th century musical genius but seriously i think if Bach was alive today and saw Allan play I think he would say " I am not worthy "

New video of you translating this to english coming?

Can you tell me about that song called Metal Fatigue from Allan? It's so difficult to understand the tuning and there is no tabs available.

LOL 😂

Yo...nice seeing you on another video!

@@bryandowlyn5479 that song uses a harmonizer set to different parts. I believe it's set to either fourths or fifths. One or the other. On top of that it's weird chords. But it is still in standard tuning.

🤣

hahhaahaha!!!!

Its only under our sun that he can use his full power

@@ianleonard3264 👏👏

Yorkshire?

No Shit. I understand Bach but Allan is not from this planet

I stopped guitar in 2016. Played since 12 yrs old. Holdsworth may be one of them 🛸 🛸 He's brilliant

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Yep. I quit

Gosh guys just because u can't screw like john holmes don't mean u have to stop screwing LOL !!

This kinda sums it up. Guthrie Govan once said about Holdsworth: "I think it's potentially dangerous when a rock type player hears a bit of Allan Holdsworth or Frank Gambale and then dives straight into that style of playing; not only is the technical aspect daunting, there's also all that musical knowledge and understanding going on behind the scenes, and it's really hard to absorb both of those aspects at once without your playing just starting to sound worse."

Yes 😎

I wouldn't call it _intimidating_ per se. Definitely _daunting_ though for most.

Not really. the theory is understandable, but the execution and application is a whole new world

Aylbdr Madison thanks for the italics there, buddy.

😂👍🎸

Bro that was hilarious 🤣🤣

Lol

Watching this on edibles right now

This is too relatable

What did you guys talk about

@@EASFromTheWest Being gay probably

That's pretty amazing.

@@nospillbloodounds like something you’re well versed in But no: we don t care to hear about it

@@nospillblood Go away troll 🤢

hahaha

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

Allan: "wel.. &$@#+_/(&_¥€£×π√π€£€©®%&$@+0¥∆¶∆×€¢£=> ..." Me:

🤣

LOL

That made me laugh.

Aleksandar Grbic haha

😂

I actually think I get what he's saying now, coming back to it. It seems like he doesn't think of scales in the context of a root note but in the context of the intervals available within that scale regardless of the root. I'm not sure what he makes of modes, or if he just uses them accidentally or subconsciously, but it's a confusing and complicated way of explaining scales and modes in different but connected positions on the fretboard. But hey, clearly it worked for him.

Scale 10 is the Messiaen mode 3. It's one of the 7 Modes of limited transposition. Oliver Messiaen catalogued these in his book La technique de mon langage musical 1944.

I thought the quotes you cited described autism pretty well.

U got it. Go for it. Experience the experiment. Lol

That's the difference between Allan Holdsworth and people who aren't aliens

@@patrickjordan8373 it'a a synesthesia

'why do you sound like you're from the north?' 'lots of planets have a north!'

😆

Yorkshire is known as God's country.

The dude's on another level. RIP to the king.

This Holdsworth guy seems pretty good, but can he play 'Smoke on the Water?' I think not!

He neglected to mention the importance of the H#13 minor double-diminished chord, and its pentatonic augmented ultra-dominant equivalent. Not to take away from his obvious talent.

Once you've finished the booklet you can move onto lesson 2.

😆

That's quite a 'just' as you use it, but I've thought the same thing for a long time. I think his 'vision' of the fretboard and the entirety of every chord within it - is pretty off the charts and probably not normal even for people like say - to pull a random name, Herbie Hancock.

Ditto, absolutely, if u can't get it...go! Hide behind your imaginary world of the web, and know that He did his best, influenced more than a few (me, too) and was humble, genuine, what can I say? Rest in peace, bro😎✔️💯🎶💥

Sure, but in the end it just sounds like noodling around... really fancy noodling around.

@@kwimmsat the time of this comment this video has 784,000 views. If he was just noodling even in a “fancy” way there wouldn’t be so many people tuning in to a complete guitar players guitarist to see what he has to say.

Quite a bit different music he plays, very different than the standard heavy metal garbage you hear nowadays.

​@@strangeuniverse1199Heavy Metal Fatigue

😆

@@PureHoney_ASMR hell no

@@PureHoney_ASMR hell no

@@PureHoney_ASMR no

@@PureHoney_ASMR stop

Chickenwomp no

Not true I got it in year 72', since then I have been playing rythm with my hands when I listen music hiding from the hall of fame

@@31145_ OOH SO YOUR FROM THE FUTURE?

Ha! Great line!

😂

To paraphrase Picasso: "Learn the rules like a professional so you can break them like an artist." Or Charlie Parker: "Learn all the theory you can, and then forget it."

theystoleitfromus very interesting. The issue is many feel so restricted by the rules I guess playing with total freedom outside playing is a stepping stone to the middle.

I believe he taught himself most of the rules using math. Kinda different from traditionally learning them imo

He kind of just wrote his own rules before learning the normal ones though

@@theystoleitfromus The funny thing about Charlie Parker's quote is that I've tried to learn many scales and chords and and end up throwing them in the trash and just do my own thing whenever I want to create my own music

same with his music for me.

Well said. The real lesson here is: find your own way, if you *really* want it you’ll find a way.

@@icecreamforcrowhurst It might take 1600 years to work out the tempered scale.

He did what Segovia did, throw away all the BS chords and open up the guitar in sets of notes as Segovia did for many of his classical transcriptions.

You dont invent scales. Like chords, they are either minor, major, or diminished in nature. There are only 12 notes to use. Then it repeats. Each interval in any key will give the same feel. The 5 will always sound like a power chord compared to the root. The flat5 compared to the root will always sound dissonant/evil so on and so forth. A major3rd will make it sound happy. A minor3rd will always sound sad. Etc etc.

Richard Paulus “so on and so forth” and then you go from 5ths to 3rds. Intentional or not, that gave me a chuckle.

@@richardpaulus9823 It is interesting how he puts a minor 6th in the Melodic minor. that shows me he doesn't think about interchanging keys as much as playing patterns Most players think "I am playing The second mode of melodic minor (dorian b2) and making it function as Dorian or mixolydian by borrowing notes from the relative diminished As it was explained to me by a professor , Allan plays to chords , most players play through changes (although Allan could do that too!) god damn Allan , how did you get so good ?

Really? Cos I did exactly this a few years ago. A lot of guitarists will do this. It's pretty basic stuff

I wish that, too.

Thanks🙏🏾

I use all these scales.

Scale 6 and Scale 8 appear the same

@@whitelightenergydads no, one is scale degree and one is scale degrees

Nope. Even more intimidated now.

Really? Would you care to elaborate?

simon lloyd no it’s not

The ideia gives us the concept of the CAGED system right? But it's almost some symmetrical scale from Oliver Messian n some "different" assymetrical scales like harmonic major etc

This changed my life back in 1996

This video was almost as crazy as stumbling across this comment and realizing I never heard of him passing... Grateful I got to see one live performance. Definitely a legend.

Fatmagul

Colin Burroughs my god I had no idea, damn shame his death wasn't in the news.

He has transcended such basic scales as that lol

Samurai Guitar you can go further than 2 notes

Lmao

@Electric Jesus I understand what you mean, but that's not really the same thing, otherwise he could have said that there's only one scale, the chromatic.

@Electric Jesus...says the guy who made his perspective on my comment the main object... I have no idea what you are talking about: I've never claimed there wasn't a pentatonic nested in the listed scales; and if I did rag about anyone, it was about guitar players who still think only or mainly about pentatonic scales.

Mary Szpara likely

I am trying to write a book on teaching this approach of learning the guitar, it’s very similar to how I developed my ear and solo ability

If you visualize the colors of the frets based on number or notes, it definitely helps. Still have to play a lot, though

He might have. But I think he was more of a "visionary." Visionaries tend to be able to visualize concepts in really interesting ways. They're visual thinkers, and it allows them to master concepts and get really really good at whatever they do.

Eddie Van Halen said "You have to be a guitar player to know how good Holdsworth is. " Also something to the effect of "I can't even steal anything from him because I have no idea what he's doing" There's something about showing those "maps" ( I don't really see them as scales because they duplicate up the neck) that totally discourages me because I know I could never memorize that, and part of that is not just my memory but my ear-- I think he can actually feel those obscure scales and know WHERE HE IS in one, no matter what position. SO you couldn't approximate his playing even if you memorized the patterns and developed the dexterity to play them. The strangeness of the intervals takes an freakishly acute harmonic sense to recognize and know where you are.

lol! I think he just means A harmonic.... but yeah, his approach is certainly "idiosyncratic"

I started playing 2 months ago and I came across this video, I don't understand how can I use a notepad to learn all the relantionship, it sounds useful though, can you elaborate a bit about that?

where do i start

Couldn't agree more. I'm self taught and everyone asks me how I got so good... The answer is simple. Hours and hours of dedication and practice, taking notes, samples, playbacks, playing around with different sounds and figuring out that x y and z sound amazing together, heck, they sound even better over a b and c. It's no mystery, just put the time in and make it your mistress

Couldn’t agree more. I hope you’re a music teacher, because this is really important advice to any committed musician

@@jayall00 ha! I hadn’t even seen your comment when I typed mine 😂

❤️

Hey!! That was a really cool statement!! Thanks for posting!!!

Musically, yes. But he died broke and unhappy, so the dream had a lot of hard reality for Allan, imposed by an ignorant world who couldn’t understand him. Life was very hard on him, and he was very hard on himself too

@@jamiepastman5594 yes well said

@@kelvinpanesar6511 thanks Kelvin took me a while to reply but thanks again

and to my ears too

I have heard in rehearsals with Allan he'd give 'charts' to new band members which were just basic outlines as Allan would play the songs to give the others the gist of it then go thru all its nuances with them

Learning scales is not for the ear musicians like me

Isn’t that not what a great musician does?

He was also probably the only example of a musician never playing something the same way even once, let alone twice. 🙂

It's the best explanation. If you know 4 tonal scales and their modes and chords (triads, 7ths and tensions, you can improvise in every context.

You have literally summarized an entire college degree worth's of essential music theory in 2 well-written paragraphs.

Thank you, that's very kind. Credit where it's due, it was this video that made everything click into place, although I'd struggled through some of George Russell's Tonal Gravity, which laid out much of the same territory. Suddenly it just boiled down to working your way through those elements. I can't say I've been exactly thorough. Mind you, I'd have hoped a college degree would give you a bit more than that. I'm slightly cooler with it now, but when I was informed by a friend - who WAS doing a music degree at the time - that "you know if you're in C, you're also in E and Ab as well", I was a bit thrown. Couldn't do even a poorly-written para on that one even now, frankly. If you're into this kind of shit, I'm trying at the moment to figure out negative harmony. MM-HM! It derives from some way of discovering a tonal axis and swapping notes around to their opposite. If that sounds vague, you're quite right. I do NOT yet get this, but there's an awesome guy called Jun Lee that interviews the utter prodigy Jacob Collier. There's a brief explanation, and the upshot is that you wind up with voicings that are actually IVm chords resolving to Imaj. So, instead of G7 - C, you get Fm6 - C. I haven't checked it out yet because I'm so used to going the usual way round the cycle to resolve, it's messing with my mind. It kind of looks like you can just keep back-cycling m6 chords: Ebm6 - Bbm6 - Fm6 - Cmaj7 but I suspect it's not quite as simple as that.

I watched that, and I think what makes it tricky is that the actual axis is the halfway point between the root and 5th, which isn't actually a note in the diatonic scale. so Jacob gives the example of C -> G, and the half-way point is 3.5 semitones up from C, which is somewhere in between an E and Eb. but from what i understand of it i think you're right - in his example instead of resolving in fifths, you're resolving downwards in 4ths

+theycallmepj Absolutely. I didn't really like that little graphic you're referring to, couldn't figure it out. I can't see how pitch could be represented on more than one axis. Plus other imponderables. However, the topic is trending, evidently, because Adam Neely just did a video touching on negative harmony, and he went into a little more detail. Now I'm more confused than ever. Although Adam rocks when it comes to this sort of thing. It actually goes back to subharmonics, plus Harry Partch used this branch of theory to inform some of his work. So the 3.5 semitone thing you got from the graphic is actually very plausible, because it's all about ratios. I didn't look that closely because I looked at it as an infographic, possibly missing a trick. There's a bunch of Wiki stuff on this I will probably work through slowly, but.... The example I got from the Jun Lee video you could paraphrase as A7 D7 G7 Cmaj = positive harmony Ebm6 Bbm6 Fm6 Cmaj = negative harmony When they run through that second example, the keys voicings really make it sound like some sort of magic trick of modulation, but transferring this on to guitar is something I'm finding a little trickier. All the usual voice leading tricks are gone, but I suspect if I think upside down a little more, it'll improve. However, even if I do crack that problem, I'm stuck, presumably, with the bare bones negative version of the positive example, and in the positive world I understand how playing with tension notes or making one or more chords minor I can get all sorts of flavours: but the negative world is a bit bare-bones. However, I dare say cleverer people than I will start to put some flesh on them and maybe even KZfaq the results. To me, this is a fascinating bit of musical history happening right in front of me. And this has languished untouched for a long time because apparently the original author couldn't write at all well. The book got panned when it came out. If you're interested, I do recommend the Adam Neely channel. All the best, pj.

Agreed. There was never anyone like him before he came on the scene, and will never be another musician like him after... his strange and beautiful genius. Even his approach to playing the notes in a simple C major scale sound so sublime and exotic. An immense loss to the creative arts.

You're deep

Maybe, but that would definitely destroy his mystique.

no it isn’t, it’s just hard work investigating, visualising and repetitively practicing connections from a subjective point of view

@@FenceThis can you do it?

@@ralphemerson497 I believe Holdsworth’s point was to not focus too much on other players exact patterns or principles. Apart from his way of thinking he also had quite gifted hands though

As for me, I don’t have that physical reach. I recognise the work methods and f ex the part of visualising the keys all across the fretboard which comes with repetitive and thorough investigation and practising through the years

He was ofcourse uniquely gifted, not a savant though. Clear sightedness can be attained from hard work and dedication

Yes I was thinking that, the way he describes it suggests he really has a photographic memory. I’m not even sure what that is but he seems to have it lol

Glad to know that I wasnt the only one who felt that way. The way he just points at the lowest and the highest note on the instrument and goes "yeah you just gotta memorize all the notes"...

Yeah I think that’s true. Certainly something like that is going on. It’s so unrewarding to try to systematically embed the patterns in your mind, unless of course you don’t really have to try. Which is what separates a genius from the rest.

was thinking the same thing. how on earth would one memorize all those notes across all those scales. we all know most of us work off the patterns and maps of common scale and chord shapes and positions....

I bet he was an undiagnosed autistic

@@RobertMJohnson Like with all guitar scales the pattern can be replicated anywhere. In a lot of Holdsworth scale patterns he has simply played the same thing up a position relative to interval changes. It's really simple when you play it as the shape is staying the same but the scale sounds different and lots of passive notes can be used because you are going through them interchangeably. The strange sounds Holdsworth comes out with are most from playing 4 notes a string at a time whilst if you play with 2 or 3 notes per string, even one, it's different. The chords are wild though and very awkward to play. It's not too hard to memorize, I just ignore the names for them all and focus on learning the scale at one point of the neck and carrying it upward the frets. It's not difficult if you pay attention of the repeating patterns just as in every mode or scale you learn

Lolo amen to that brother

The added finger length then Rain Man-like savant mental powers and I'm there too!

My wife says I'd be way better if I gain 2 more inches as well😅😅😅😅😅

Love your stuff brother.

@@JM-zq9em 😆

maybe a tone engineer

He was a genius for sure but some of his scales and compositions are hard to digest sonically, at least for me.

@@adriangroeneveld9341 They take time. My instructor forced Holdsworth on me. He said give 16 Men of Tain a listen 1-2 times per week for a couple of months. When it hit me it hit me. There is so much emotion in his playing. His music does not make me bob my head, move, but instead just listen in pure joy and awe.

Greatest understatement i have ever read!