Allan Holdsworth - Legato Playing

Allan Holdsworth talking about how he "stumbled" across playing legato while attempting to make the guitar sound more like a horn.

To explain Allan Holdsworth's legato more in depth, Allan uses only hammer ons. No pull offs. I read in an interview that Allan used to practiced real hard to not use pull offs. He just lifts his finger and hammer on backwards. As he stated, it kinda like tapping the fingerboard.

Marshall Harrison did an awesome video on legato.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bTI2s4svE2s

Category:

Music

Tags:

• legato
• allan
• holdsworth
• guitar
• saxophone
• horn
• jazz
• fusion
• playing
• smoothly
• without
• break
• in
• sound

[Jamsessionroom1337]

I can respect that, instead of being like million of guitarist that buy a million guitars into billions of different tunings, they buy all these amps, and they never properly learn how to play. And he, just with his love of music, wether respect or no respect for the "legacy" the fact is, he's much better than those who actually "prefer" or "love" the instrument, who don't even respect it enough to learn how to play it properly.

[shadowknight132]

@Jamsessionroom1337

Yup :) You must admit that he is a genius. He changed the tone of the guitar forever. He will never be forgotten even centuries pass his death.

[shadowknight132]

Check out Allan Holdsworth Interview Live @ Johnny D's. Allan says he now loves the guitar.

[aliensporebomb]

The interesting thing is that the technique section in "Guitar for the practicing musician" from 1984 clarifies that he hammers on and LIFTS off to sound notes.

So he's not using pull offs, he's using lift offs as the counterpoint to hammerons.

[shadowknight132]

@aliensporebomb

Oh I found out how to do it. Check out my other video about the carvin interview. Study how he angles his fingers when he does an hammer off. He straightens his finger when he hammer off. Like how would to do tap 2 notes per string.

[BullToTheShit]

Too bad in his entire instructional video he doesn't show any lagato phrasings to practice. If the producer of the video actually knew how to play guitar, he would have had him show a few examples, no doubt.

[shadowknight132]

@BernietheShredder

But if you think about it, synthaxe is not the same as the guitar. It just has a fretboard of a guitar. It's like you would say a sitar is a guitar.

[dvnupldr]

@MrAlexGTV LOL, i love holdsworth but that made me laff! xD

[MyCreationHede]

@shadowknight132 What he did with Tony Williams at the time revolutionised music forever actually.

[MrAlexGTV]

"I wat trying to make the guitar sound more like a wh*re."

[stomachlining]

one of my heros

[JasonWB007]

@alexmortland That's the funniest thing I've read on here in a long time!

[JasonWB007]

This is what you call noodling? LOL...I wonder what PLAYING sounds like :-)

[alexmortland]

Hi, I'm Allan Holdsworth. I don't really like the guitar too much. Hey, check this out. (**plays insanely fast & intelligently phrased legato runs all over the neck. Shrugs**). Whatever.

[spider62able]

For the record he doesn't hate the guitar! He wanted to recreate a sound( Like a horn or other wind instrument) that he heard in his head and has been frustrated trying to create that sound on the guitar. He also doesn't like his older recordings because he feel's his latest work is closer to the sound in his head!