Фрагменти от интервюта с А.Х.:
<http://www.richardhallebeek.com/interviews/index.php>
:: I heard you might do thousands of takes before you're happy with a solo
"Indeed. Usually, I'm not easily satisfied with my playing. First, I always start out by writing a chart for myself with the chord changes of the song and the scales that belong to those chords.I've applied that same way of working on my latest standards album, although none of the songs were mine. I don't approach the songs like a bebop player would do, like: playing his favorite licks over the same chord changes. If I hear someting in my playing that occurs too many times, I try to avoid it. Then I just play long series of solos until I end up having something I'm happy with."
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<http://www.steveadelson.com/index.php?sec=reports&sub=interviews>
TCG: You studied scales differently then most guitarists. Could you explain your thought processes?
AH: To me, it's a really logical system. I recognize and see certain scales. I don't think about what the root is. I just see a permutation of intervals. When I look at the neck the notes just light up where those scales would be. I hear a chord or a color. The harmony is one color and you can get two or three things that come along on top of it, that match it. I like playing things that some say would be a diatonically incorrect note. But it's really not, depending on how it's played. It's really appealing to me to weave in and out of these colors. I love the way that sounds. I also like to see the symmetries. For example, if we consider a C Major scale, with D as the center (D dorian) it's symmetrical in both directions.
A B C D E F G
Steps: 1 _ 1 1 _ 1
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<http://archive.guitarplayer.com/archive/artists/holdsworth82.shtml>
Where did your wide hand stretches come from?
Basically, if you know you want to play over a certain chord or a certain scale, most of the time guitarists play the scale so that the notes are played consecutively. I wanted to avoid that by playing intervals that were spaced further apart. They're the same scales and chords, it's just that I wanted them to be juggled around more. I'm just juggling, really.
How do you relate your solos to the chord changes? Do you consciously try to cover those chords?
Yeah. I break it down to find out what the chord structure is, what scales I can use, if I can superimpose things over the top such as triad. I generally experiment with it. There's no set way. I don't go about each tune thinking, "This is what I have to do." For me to be able to play it I have to be able to see it in my mind's eye. I can't play off a piece of paper. If I do, I've had it.
Do you use hammer-ons or do you try to pick every note?
I use a mixture with a lot of hammer-ons. I don't use conventional pull-offs, though. I never pull my finger sideways, because I find that when you pull the strings off, you get a kind of meowing sound as you deflect it sideways. And I detest that sound. In the past, I have practiced quite hard to not play like that. I don't think my fingers come off sideways at all. They just drop on and off directly over the top like I'm tapping the strings.
As you play faster, do you find that you are less conscious of your actual technique?
I don't consciously make any transition between playing slower and faster. Sure you might be likely to make more mistakes as you start waffling around, but you try not to. Because if you continually do that, you obviously can't play that way anyway. Each has its own set of problems.
Do you purposely avoid playing common rock licks or blues licks?
In a word, yes. I occasionally use them if I'm in a particularly jovial mood. Sometimes I'll be caught doing it just for fun. Usually I try to avoid them; I try to avoid everything. I'm still looking, basically.
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<http://www.angelfire.com/oh/scotters2/allanint.html>
Q: How di you go about finding things on guitar and building up the language that makes up your playing? Did you think of your playing as being different from other guitarists?
Allan: It wasn't intentional. I didn't say, "He does that so I'm not going to do that." Basically, I always wanted to be, and always dreamed of, being really good at improvising, so I knew if I really wanted to be good, I had to know how to play over chords. But I wanted to play over chords and not sound like anyone else. I thought, well I don;t want to learn what other people do when they play all their chords, I want to figure it out for myself. So I figured that I needed to know about harmony, and I need to know about scales and chords, and I devised a system of working out everything and catologing it, using math to figure it out. I knew that if I used math I could figure anything out.
Q: When you say math, what exactly do you mean?
Allan: Say, for example, I wanted to find out how many seven note or eight note scales there are in one octave. It's easy with math, you keep number one constant, keeping it in the same key, and then you permutate the other notes until you've got every combination, and that's what I did. I wrote them all down and catalogued them. I'd take four notes, five notes, six notes, seven notes, and then i'd go up to nine note scales. Then I'd spread them out over two octaves, playing however many notes I wanted the scale to contain.
Q: So what happens in the second octave is different from what happens in the first octave, with a seperate set of intervals?
Allan: Yeah, and when it comes out again on the second one, you can take three octaves. You can do as many as you want. I only went as far as three, (laughs) because of the guitar.
Q: Was this done at the same time as learning about conventional major and minor scales?
Allan: No, obviously this came after that, but what I knew was inadequate, and I couldn't play over certain chords, because I didn't know what scales to use. I knew if I did this, I'd have them, and then I could use my ears to guide me as to how I wanted to use them, based on what I fealt musically. I catologued them all, and I set aside all of the ones that had more than three semi-tones in a row, because they would be impractical. I finished up with this huge ream of stuff that I needed to learn. That stuff still applies now, I still only remember a small amount of it, but I learn more and more each time. Basically, I did the same thing with chords, I'd build chords from the scales, which is how I think of chords.
Q: Were these specific things that you were thinking, "I can't play over that," or was it that you just wanted to expand your knowledge and find new chords?
Allan: It was more like I wanted to find chords and voicings of chords, then I'd work on those seperately from trying to figure out how to play over them. That's why, when I see a chord symbol, I sometimes don't even play a chord that might even constitute that one, I might just play some other chord that's built on the scale, because that's how I think of it. When the chords change, it's the movement, you can hear the scales change from one to the other. When I see the neck, when the chords change, it's like you can imagine a neck with LED's on it, and they're all lit up. When it gets to the next chord, all the dots change. The what I have to do is try to make a melody out of it, or make some sence out of it, or combine that with other things I want to do, like superimposing things on top of other things or whatever. Then you can play on things and add extra chords, playing something that suggests another chord between that chord.
Q: You've mentioned in previous interviews the concept of superimposing triads, and that one of your experiments was trying virtually every type of triad over a given root note or over a given triad.
Allan: Yeah, mixed triads, major ones, then minor over major, and so on. I also used to practice scales playing four notes on one string, so I'd be able to break out of patterns and wouldn't be thinking of just where my hand would fall. Then I could think about the neck linearly, moving up and down the neck, as well as positionally.
