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Allan Holdsworth


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For those who don't know, Allan Holdsworth is a jazz fusion guitarist who is known for his.. rather unique take on music.

 

So, I'd like to get a mass of different opinions on this.

 

Listen to the follow track:

 

 

Now, is this song an example musical genius, with unique and awesome chord shapes/modes/scales OR is it an unlistenable incoherent and nonsensical mess that has no musical merit? Or is it a bit of both? 

 

Now... based on your viewpoint, I don't believe there is a right or wrong answer, but TRY not to get too heated in this topic if you disagree with someone plz? :P Play nice :)

 

 

If you're interested in my personal opinion, I find it somewhat nonsensical, but I love the ideas present and I believe it warrants some study in order to help people create music with some originality and flair. 

 

What do you think?

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Yeah, I'm not sure what you're going on about, Will; this is relatively expected in terms of jazz fusion. There's a lot more "out" stuff than this.

Whats "expected" in a certain style wasn't the point. Try asking someone who doesn't listen to jazz fusion or other experimental genres - which is a lot of people. A lot of musicians find it too much as well, which is why I asked. Based on the responses here, you all find it quite acceptable but a lot of people I asked personally (including some people from OCR) found it to out there to be enjoyable. Not that they all did, but it was roughly half the people I asked. I was curious on other peoples opinions here so rather than ask in person, I made a thread. Getting a much more one sided answer here, which is interesting :)

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"Now, is this song an example musical genius, with unique and awesome chord shapes/modes/scales OR is it an unlistenable incoherent and nonsensical mess that has no musical merit? Or is it a bit of both? "

 

Posing your question like this seemed to imply that this kind of stuff is new/avant garde; so I felt compelled to answer that it isn't. It's just further down the virtuoso rabbit hole than what most people listen to. I personally don't really care for it, no, it sounds more like noodlery/wankery than coherent musical thought.

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I found the lead melodic contour to be somewhat noodly/meandering and/or busy at 0:56 - 1:08 and 1:14 - 1:43 (was waiting for it to take a bit of a break; 1:48 - 1:58 made more sense written that way IMO), but harmonically it still made sense. Smartly written, but I felt like less scales would have helped make it more memorable.

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