Allan Holdsworth - Compositions and Style

Compositions and Style

Holdsworth's solo compositions are primarily instrumental, but vocals were prominent on all his 1980s albums except Sand. Two of his most recurring singers were Paul Williams (featured on I.O.U., Road Games and Metal Fatigue) and Rowanne Mark (Atavachron and Secrets). Additionally, he himself sang on 'Igginbottom's Wrench and The Things You See. In his early career he occasionally played violin (Velvet Darkness, Sunbird, The Things You See and I.O.U.) and acoustic guitar (Velvet Darkness, U.K., Gazeuse! and Metal Fatigue), but claims not to be proficient at the latter; this being due to its percussive tonal quality, and hence a lack of desire to play an instrument which isn't optimised for legato playing (as explained below).

He has a distinctive style that involves a strong scalar sense, combining elements of jazz and progressive rock. The harmonic structure of his pieces can be highly abstruse, with frequently shifting tonal centres, and his soloing follows from a self-taught advanced modal framework derived directly from his unusually-voiced chords. His phrasing almost always features striking yet subtle transitions between notes that often work contrary to the listener's expectations of consonance and dissonance, with wide and unpredictable intervallic leaps. In his solos he predominantly uses various legato techniques such as slides, hammer-ons and pull-offs (the latter being a personalised method which works more akin to a 'reversed' hammer-on); all of which result in an extremely fluid lead sound. One of the reasons for his renowned emphasis on legato, as opposed to picking, stems from a desire to make the sound between picked and legato notes indistinguishable.

Another of his most identifiable traits is the use of rich, fingerpicked chords (often awash with delay, chorus and other complex effects), which are articulated and sustained using volume swells to create sounds reminiscent of the horn and saxophone. He has said that he prefers both of these instruments to the guitar, the latter of which was not his first choice of instrument upon receiving one from his father when beginning to play. It was because of this unfamiliarity with the guitar, combined with attempting to make it sound more like a saxophone, that he originally began to use legato without realising that it was not a common method of playing at the time. Furthermore, he was influenced greatly by such saxophonists as John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Michael Brecker and Charlie Parker, whilst some of his favourite guitarists were Django Reinhardt, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery, Jimmy Raney, Charlie Christian and Hank Marvin.