Allan Holdsworth Quotes

Historically, the notes of scale systems anywhere have been based on these pure harmonics.

I don't know a high C from a low C.

Register is very important. Music sounds best in a certain register.

The chromatic scale is what you use to give the effect of drinking a quinine martini and having an enema simultaneously.

I do remember, though, when I discovered the third! I was about five years old - it was a very pleasing sound. I remembered that if I hit one note, then skipped one and played the next, I could get this really good sound.

We all do 'do, re, mi,' but you have got to find the other notes yourself.

To me it's no accident that all the symphony orchestras around the world tune up to the note A. And A is 440 cycles, except in Germany where it's 444. But the universe is 450 cycles. So what I'm trying to say is, I think it's God's voice, melody especially. Counterpoint, retrograde inversion, harmony... that's the science and the craft.

Our musical alphabet is poor and illogical.

You start way down on a low B flat on the tuba and you have a chromatic scale; you can match the colours all the way up, till you get to the top of the trumpet.

The bottom string is tuned to an open G.

There are only twelve tones and they need to be treated carefully.

On acoustic guitar I tend to stay in the key of D for some reason. On electric guitar I keep basic: C, G, D, and A. The key of D minor is also real good for me.

I can read a chord chart, but I couldn't read a note chart.

There are only so many chords and notes in the world.

And I've made it a choice on my records that sometimes I leave the breath or the trailing note that sometimes falls into a flat or a sharp.

Before you can apply chromatic ideas to scales and arpeggios, you have to get the chromatic scale itself under your fingers. You should learn it up and down the neck, and become comfortable with the fingerings.

No disrespect to people that don't use music theory or don't know it. It does help to be able to figure out what key a song is in, even though with your scales you can figure it out so you can set your Auto-Tune right. So many songs with Auto-Tune are off or have the wrong note playing on the 808. And they pass it off as being hood.

The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.

Take but degree away, untune that string, and hark, what discord follows!

My reading of serious books about serious music is seriously compromised by the way that I can't understand any musical theory. Any mentions of D major or C minor are meaningless to me.

I usually write songs in a guy key because my voice is so husky.

The only thing that makes sense to me that I've learnt over the years is knocking tunes together.

I enjoy making music more than anything in the world. It's the only thing that it's felt the same since I was like 15.

I can play pretty much 1-5.

Music has to deal with silence. Music has to deal with time.