Allan Holdsworth Quotes

It's been very hard for the guitar as a serious synthesizer to compete with keyboards.

Engineering producers who don't play and have technology as a background may be the reason why there's a lot of cold non-musical music, for lack of a better description.

For me, the guitar synthesizer is a great writing instrument.

I think the indie-rock world is very creative. They're always looking for something new, and I think of all the instruments we have in the world, the ones that are the most creative and interesting are the electronic ones. There are so many sounds and plug-ins you can use.

My interest in his new toy, the Theremin, isn't very big. It simply does not fit into my way of playing music. I do not want to fiddle around with my hands in the air.

Currently I'm working with Parker Fly on a new Midi guitar to arrive next year.

Computers and electronic music are not the opposite of the warm human music. It's exactly the same.

When I sit behind that electronic drum, it dominates me; there is no innovation in composing music like that.

I have a Chamberlain I bought from some surfers in Westwood many years ago. It's an early analog synthesizer; it operates on tape loops. It has 60 voices - everything from galloping horses to owls to rain to every instrument in the orchestra.

I was never worried that synthesizers would replace musicians. First of all, you have to be a musician in order to make music with a synthesizer.

I was the first artist, I think, to ever do an all-keyboard album. There were things that resembled it, like Stevie Wonder. A lot of his stuff was on keyboards, but he used brass and he used other things as well. I was the first artist, also, to use drum machines. I was really the one who kind of started that whole thing.

Kraftwerk isn't a band. It's a concept. We call it 'Die Menschmaschine,' which means 'the human machine.'

When I began making electronic music, the only thing I was thinking about was creating music that I really liked. I didn't think about what effect it would have; I was busy doing it.

Great songwriting will never die - it's in the DNA of music - but what's new and exciting is pairing that with new sounds that technology is enabling us to make.

My first synthesizer was the VCS3. I got it in Bristol in the late Sixties, long before Pink Floyd used them. I had to sell an acoustic guitar and an old reel-to-reel tape recorder to raise the money. You can do fantastic things with modern computers, but you cannot use them in the same intuitive, spontaneous way you can a VCS3.

When I was about 14, I got a tacky keyboard for 250 pounds and put on a drum machine and found I could write a song.

When synthesizers appeared everyone was a composer suddenly.

People shouldn't knock the synthesizer. It's an aid, and it depends on how you use it, just like any other instrument.

I took to the synthesizer. My cousin had some synthesizers, and I'd always make stuff on those things.

To me, the original VCS3 synthesizer is like a Stradivarius.

Synthesizers can be programmed with more imagination than a real, 'human' performance. It's a joyful thing.

To me, I don't see any difference between a synthesizer and an acoustic instrument. It's what's done on it that counts.

These days, DJ's are the ones who are bringing fresh sounds to the music world. In fact, they are creating a new spatial music. They are the space transformers of the universe.

A violin is nothing more than a piece of wood and a dead cat. But it's a piece of technology. So when computers came along, in the '70s, I suddenly thought, hang on a second, this is interesting. These things can become an instrument. So I just became very interested in them, and started, playing with electronics.

I would argue that among musicians who work in technology today, the level of technological sophistication probably exceeds that of military programs, to be blunt. They are just really smart people attracted to making strange new sounds.