Alan Holdsworth

This guy is nuts!

the wiki about him -->>

Allan Holdsworth (6 August 1946 – 15 April 2017)[1] was a British jazz fusion and progressive rock guitarist and composer.

Holdsworth was known for his esoteric and idiosyncratic usage of advanced music theory concepts, especially with respect to melody and harmony. His music incorporates a vast array of complex chord progressions, often using unusual chord shapes in an abstract way based on his understanding of “chord scales”, and intricate improvised solos, frequently across shifting tonal centres. He used myriad scale forms often derived from those such as the Lydian, diminished, harmonic major, augmented, whole tone, chromatic and altered scales, among others, often resulting in an unpredictable and dissonant “outside” sound. His unique legato soloing technique stemmed from his original desire to play the saxophone. Unable to afford one, he strove to use the guitar to create similarly smooth lines of notes. He also became associated with playing an early form of guitar synthesizer called the SynthAxe, a company he endorsed in the 1980s.

Holdsworth has been cited as an influence by a host of rock, metal and jazz guitarists such as Eddie Van Halen,[2] Joe Satriani,[3] Greg Howe,[4] Shawn Lane,[5] Richie Kotzen,[6] John Petrucci,[7] Alex Lifeson,[8] Kurt Rosenwinkel,[9] Yngwie Malmsteen,[10] Michael Romeo,[11] Ty Tabor,[12] Fredrik Thordendal,[13] Daniel Mongrain,[14] John Frusciante,[15] and Tom Morello.[16] Frank Zappa once lauded him as “one of the most interesting guys on guitar on the planet”,[17] while Robben Ford has said: “I think Allan Holdsworth is the John Coltrane of the guitar. I don’t think anyone can do as much with the guitar as Allan Holdsworth can.”[18]

his harmony is so weird

he invented his own system for conceptualizing scales outside of regular music theory. hes on a whole other level. he visualizes the entire fretboard as one scale.

I came across him from marbinmusic’s channel I was looking up stuff on byzantine/double harmonic major/ modes of harmonic minor.
he looks like spagett.

spagett!

Harmonic minor

 Exploring harmonic minor

1. Harmonic minor
2. Locrian #6
3. Ionian #5 (aug maj)
4. * Ukrainian dorian (dorian #4)
5. Phrygian dominant
6. * Lydian #2
7. 6 Super-Locrian (alt)

* these 2 are of interest bc they both have a m6 or a m7b5 that can be built off them.

Visualizing it in C

Make a c dim triad (C,Eb,F#,A)

Now build 4 harmonic minor scales off of each of those root notes.

Sounds like 4 random keys

What do all these keys have in common?

A 7b9 chord on the 5

This chord can be spelled out rootlessly using 1 diminished chord, D dim (D,F,G#,B)

F dim,  G# dim, B dim are all inversions.

In C the minor 1-5 Cm to G7b9

In Eb the minor 1-5 Ebm to Bb7b9

In F# the minor 1-5 F#m to C#7b9

In A the minor 1-5 Am to E7b9

The most Interesting thing is the Major7 that lives on the 6th degree of Harmonic Minor.

The Lydian #2 mode is so cool.

You’ve got these 4; 

In Cm you’ve got Abmaj7

In Ebm you’ve got Bmaj7

In F#m you’ve got Dmaj7

In Am you’ve got Fmaj7

This is your new home, your new point of reference. Meet the neighbours.

A half step down you’ll find the 5 chord.

The Phrygian dominant: its like a mixolydian b2, b6 and of course b7.

But what’s so cool about that maj7 chord is its not just major 7 

its also maj 6 AND minor 6.

And where theres minor 6s that means theres m7b5 because m6 inverted are the same as half diminished.

In Cm:

Abm6 = Fm7b5

Second degree: Locrian #6 is home to another half diminished. 

In Cm: Dm7b5 = Fm6

 

The fm6 lives on the 4th mode: Ukrainian Dorian. What’s cool about this guy is you can add the 9 to get fm69.

So thats cool 4th mode has fm7b5 AND fm6 with a 9.

One last thing i wanna say is that in Cm, the abmaj7 you can flat the 5th. UNIQUE! 

work these chords into your hands in close voice block chords.

Then  once you’ve got that down you will be able to harmonize the harmonic minor scale by alternating between each of the different voicings and warping into the 3 other keys with the d diminished.

These are my diagrams for the other keys.

That’s visually how I think about it.

Harmonic minor doesn’t have a minor 6 chord on the one like melodic minor. I often like to borrow it anyway because I like the movement options it brings.

7th mode of melodic minor has more even sound imo 

than the harmonic minors 7th mode.

These are some hand signals for musicians. My  teacher told me he played with some jazz ppl who also had secret signals to modulate and alter chord quality. Highly skilled improvisers can really run with this.

Arabic maqam

There are 72 heptatonic scales in maqamat

holy shit! 

now regular major scales in all 12 keys and modes  doesn’t seem as daunting in comparison; at least your not dealing with microtones.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arabic_maqam

ive been thinking alot about the 6th mode of the harmonic minor scale lately.

that lydian sharp# sound. its so cool it can be diminished m6, minor maj7, major7, major 6. its got that phrygian kinda sound love recentering my whole world to revolve around it instead or the major key paradigm. love mapping out its alterations.

Thinkin bout those bebop scales

what is the passing tone for each?

• dorian bebop = the major 3rd
• melodic minor = the #5 (just like regular barry harris)
• harmonic minor = the b7
• dominant = natural 7

WH scale = good for diminished 7

1,2,b3,4,#4,#5,6,7,8

HW = 713b9

1,b2,b3,3,#4,5,6,b7,8

ALT = 1,b2,b3,3,#4,b6,b7,8

Thinkin bout  those minor scales

what do they have in common? what sets them apart?

obviously they all have a minor third.

• melodic minor is just major scale with a flat 3 its got a natural 7 so does
• Harmonic minor again with the maj 7 also got b6
• dorian phrygian aeolian all have b7
• phrygian flat 2 obviously. also flat 6 b7
• natural minor (aeolian) aeoli sauce. has flat 6 also like phrygian

okay so phrygian and aeolian have b6 and of course b7 and b3.

they can be ordered in sequence with each one having one more alteration than the last.

1. major scale: NOTHING!!
2. melodic minor: b3 = 1
3. dorian: b3,b7  = 2  = 2
4. aeolian: b3,b6,b7 = 3 
5. phrygian: b2,b3,b6,b7 = 4

btw the font im using is redhat mono.

I like monotype fonts. reminds me of the terminal.

I like permanent marker . monotype fonts also remind me of the realbook. like something that was hammered out out a typewriter and then photocopied.

Now that I figured out how to use newsboat I am going to consider accessibility more. I love being able to read stuff in the terminal. bloggers editor is ugly as hell its like a flash bang. I got into using stack-edit to write in markdown bc it uses bloggers api. but what sucks are the changes aren't always synced up if you want to make some changes sometimes the main one is a few commits behind and its easy to save over a blog. its cool that is can be used with local storage but its annoying having to nuke it every time and pull down the latest changes because theres a welcome text file you gotta delete every time. its kind of stupid having to use a whole other website to edit a site. Thats what got me looking for other alternatives. Hugo markdown and github pages, although each one kind of has its own things going for it. Now that I know you can easily link youtube videos in a blogger post thats a huge plus. its kind of hacky to do that on gh pages.  its a whole process.

How to get youtube videos on GH pages 

• take a screenshot 
• shrink the image. on iphone i think theres an app callred resizr?  make it 320px
• i use mweb to upload the image to imgur and grab the md link
• make a link and put the image  markdown inside where the text description would go

its like a russian nesting doll of markdown inside markdown.

markdownception.

all that just for  yt video because gt doesn't do youtube iframe embedding. but yeah its cool that it can be done its just a whole lot of hassle. you really learn to appreciate it when you don't need to go to all that trouble and it just works.

BLACK SCREEN GOODNESS

as much as I love nice layouts and css. It gives you perspective when its all gone. A bare bones page in the terminal is wonderful. I tried to rassle with the blogger layout and didn't get too far with it even after I learned a bit of html css and javascript i figured they just don't give you that much freedom and i've kind of made peace with it and learned to cope. The github page i've gone all in on styling and its taken me away from what I was actually trying to say in the first place. I welcome this change. no bs-ing here. you couldn't do it if you tried and i like that.