This Allan Holdsworth lesson takes a look at his solo on The Things You See and especially some of the arpeggio based ideas he uses.
To me, Allan Holdsworths playing is not really based on the use of arpeggios. His lines are more scale based and uses interval structures that don’t always make sense as complete arpeggios. At the same time he does have some ways that he uses arpeggios in his playing that is hugely interesting and for me has been very useful to check out. Among other things his use of Quartal Arpeggio and the way he plays them in this video is very interesting.
Other Lessons on Allan Holdsworth
If you want to check out some of the other lesson I have done on Allan Holdsworth you can do so here:
The PDF with examples for this video is available through Patreon. You can check out my Patreon Page here: https://www.patreon.com/jenslarsen
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This Allan Holdsworth Solo Lesson takes a look at the scales and arpeggios he is using in a few phrases from the Sixteen Men Of Tain solo. I love Holdsworths playing and it is really interesting to try to figure out what is going on because his melodic language is pretty much unique.
The video breaks down 4 phrases and talks about how they are constructed using different scales sounds such as Lydian Augmented and 2 different Messiaen Modes.
Of course this is an interpretation and an analysis based on what I know about him and what I think he is playing, but if you don’t agree then feel free to leave a comment!
Allan Holdsworth is famous for his very beautiful but also quite difficult and advanced jazz chords. In this video I am going to start with some voicings that I checked out from Holdsworth and apply them to a II V I. I then go over how to invert them and demonstrate how you can generate more great chord voicings from this material.
Taking a voicing and inverting it is probably the most efficient way to find more chords and it is also a great exercise to check or improve your knowledge of the fretboard.
The II V I example
The main example is a II V I using some of the voicings that I picked up from Allan Holdsworth.
The focus of this lesson is on the larger voicings with 4 notes spread out over 2 octaves. The starting point is shown here below with two chords per bar.
When I made this I was just planning to make a few examples of how to apply voicings like this to a II V I. When I made this example I realized that the Cmaj7 chords were inversions of each other and that made me take this approach to the lesson.
This type of chord voicing is to me is most useful for sustained voicings. The point of playing a structure like this is to really show case the way the combination of notes sound. That means that when I use these voicings I am not trying to convey a groove or work with them.
You could in that respect argue that Holdsworth doesn’t really have a voicing vocabulary that allows him to comp in that way, which he also never really did.
How to make inversions – Inversions for the Cmaj7 voicing
Strictly speaking this is a C6/9 voicing since the notes are G,A,D & E., but since maj6/9 and maj7 chords are pretty much interchangeable I have notated it as a maj7. I guess the thinking is that it is just a tonic chord in a major scale.
When inverting voicings the idea is that you have to order the notes in pitch within an octave and use that as a reference to find the inversions.
For the Cmaj7 this is shown here below.
The original voicing is (from low to high) G,D,A,E. If we order those in pitch we get: G A D E (as shown in the 2nd bar)
This yields a way of moving to other inversions.
The original voicing is G,D,A,E. If we move that down an inversion (using the same strings and the row of notes) we get E,A,G,D and in that way the rest of the inversions are created.
Inversions for Dm7
The Dm7 voicing is a Dm7(9,11) and the notes are F,C,G and E.
Notice how stacks of 5ths seems to reappear in these voicings.
If we order the notes in pitch it gives us the row: E,F,G,C
With this row we have can produce the 3 other inversions of this chord. In the 2nd voicing I move one of the voicings from the 4th to the 3rd string to make it easier to play.
The Altered dominant inversions
The Altered dominant chord in this lesson is a G7(b5b13) voicing, as shown here below.
When we order the notes in a pitch row we get: Eb,F,B and Db.
Again this is used to create the other inversions by moving up and down in the tone row on each string.
Using the inversions
The goal with making the inversions is of course also to put the voicings together in new examples of II V I voicing sets.
In the examples below combines three different inversions in a II V I.
The first one is using a descending top note melody from G to E. It is often easier to move from chord to chord while descending since the voice-leading is naturally moving down.
The 2nd example is going against this and has a top note melody that moves up.
One of the things that is an advantage with these voicings is that the way the notes are spread around the octaves makes them less obvious for voice leading.
This makes it easier to make other choices as shown here below:
Inversions of everything
The idea of making inversions of chord voicings is useful on several levels for your jazz guitar skills.
It is very useful to be aware of exactly what notes you are playing in a chord voicing.
The process is a great way to solve problems with fingerings for chords
You stay training your knowledge of the fretboard
You get some new voicings that might be extremely useful
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Allan Holdsworth is of course famous for his fantastic chord voicings and use of extended chords. I thought it would be an interesting experiment to take a standard and try to play through it with the type of chords that Holdsworth might use, so I took the song Days Of Wine And Roses and went through that applying chords and voicings with that in mind.
Holdsworth and Standard Jazz Harmony
The music of Allan Holdsworth is of course not based on the same type of harmony that you find in a jazz standard, and in his chord vocabulary there are many different types of voicings. The ones I chose to focus on in this video are the more open chords that are spread out over several octaves. Since the music that Holdsworth plays is also a different harmonic language my chord choices are a bit different. This is mostly because I would have to completely reharmonize the piece to get closer to those chord sounds, and for now I feel that it would missing the point. I really want to try to bridge the gap between this type of voicings and more standard jazz chord progressions for this lesson. Maybe in another lesson I can also adapt the chord sounds a bit.
A lot of these are Drop2&4 voicings or derived from that, though not all of them. If you want to check out more on drop2&4 voicings to make it easier to play and understand what I am doing here you can do so here:
The chord voicing is actually an inversion of a very common Fmaj7(9) voicing with the notes A G F and E spread out over two octaves. The original is a very common “bossa nova” chord: F A E G.
The 2nd chord: Eb7 is constructed by voice leading the first voicing, so A moves to G, F to Eb, G to A and E to Db. This gives us an Eb7(b5) voicing which is in fact also an inversion of an Drop3 Eb7(b5).
The Am7(b5) voicing has some added “Holdsworth color” because I opted for a Am7(9b5) which I here play with an Ebmaj7(#5) Drop2&4 voicing.
The D7alt is voiced with a drop2&4 D7(b9b13) chord, which you could also look at as being an Ebm6 chord.
Mixing drop3 and drop 2 and 4
Both Drop2&4 and drop3 voicings share that they contain larger intervals, and this means that you can often easily get away with mixing them.
This happens on the Gm7 below where the first chord is a Bbmaj7 drop2&4 voicing that then is followed with a drop3 Bbmaj7 voicing. The drop3 is played a bit odd because I skip a string in the middle, but like this the sound between the two fits better. I didn’t actually notice that it was a drop3 in the beginning.
The Bbm7-Eb7 is a straight ahead way to voice IVm II V in F: Dbmaj7 and Eb7(b5) both drop2 and 4.
The chord voicings that I am using on the Am7 is a stack of 4ths over a low E. The voicing is less common because it has the 3rd and 7th high in the chord and the 5th and 11th lower.
The Dm7 chord is coming out of voice leading the Am7 to F, so it has a Dm7(9) sound.
On the Gm7 C7 I start with the Drop3 Gm7(9) and move from there to a C7(13) drop2&4.
Spread Triads with added notes
To me the emphasis, when using these voicings is on the sound of the chord more than the functional character of the progression. This is evident both in the voice leading and also in the way I play the chords as mostly sustained surfaces of sound.
That actually makes it a bit difficult to really get it to work on the kind of progression shown here below. The First two bars are repeating material that I already covered. The only thing worth noticing is of course that the Eb7(b5) from bar2 can also work as an A7(b5).
On the Gm7 I use a Bbmaj7 spread or open-voiced triad and then over that triad I add an 11th( a C). This voicing has a 5ht interval as the highest interval and I move this interval up a 1/2 step to the C7alt (which is then a C7(b5b9).
Parallel fifths!
The parallel fifths that are moving already on the Gm7, C7alt are resolved as a G and D on the Fmaj7. This is coming from voice-leading the C7alt.
The Eb7(b5) is a standard drop2&4. The Am7(b9) is also a drop2&4 this time I am using a CmMaj7 chord voicing to add the 9th to the sound. THe D7(b13) is another drop 2 and 4 voicing.
Re-using voicings on other chord types
The first two voicings on Gm7 are the same as in the first half. On the Bbm7 I am using the same voicing as I started with on the Fmaj7 in bar 1. Now I am playing it from F and it contains F,Db,Eb and C which is a Bbm(9,11) sound. In the context the Ab is not really missed.
The Eb7 is coming out of voice leading the Bbm chord and contains G(3rd),Db(b7),A(#11) and C(13th).
A few different ways to derive new voicings
The Am7 voicing here below is using the same structure as we saw on the Gm7 before the half of the song: An Open triad with an added 11th. The Dm7 is a Drop2 and 4 Fmaj7 voicing where the A is substituted with a G so that we have a Dm7(9,11). I really like this voicing with it’s stack of 5ths and the added 9 on top.
On the Bm7(b5) I am using a straight Bm7(b5) drop2&4 voicing.
The Bb7 is played with an FmMaj7 voicing, this one derived from teh Fmaj7(9) voicing I used in the beginning but now with an Ab instead of an A.
The last 4 bars start with an Am7 voicing that are coming out of voice leading the Bb7. I chose to add a 9 even if that is not really in the key of F.
The Dm7 and Gm7 are both drop2&4 voicings that I talked about earlier.
The C7alt voicing is another drop2&4, but this time with a C7(#9b5) which has a major 6th as the highes interval (Gb toEb).
The turnaround is reharmonized a bit so instead of going to F I resolve first to a Dbmaj7 using the drop3 voicing I also used on Gm7 and a Gbmaj7 that is voiced with the chord I also started with. This also makes it easy to loop the whole progression.
How to use this lesson
I hope you can use this etude to learn some new chords and hopefully you can also get some ideas for new voicings and also a bit of insight in how you comp with these larger interval structures in the style of Allan Holdsworth.
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There are some many things in a jazz line, arpeggios, quartal harmony, chromatic enclosures. Part of the challenge in using the stuff we practice is to make it into lines that work and combine it with what we already use. In this video I am going to demonstrate some of the things.
In this video I am going to go over some of my ideas for m7 lines. This will give you some insight in how I build lines and what I use. It also gives me the chance to show you some of the things that I use that I did not work on a in a systematical way like licks from Allan Holdsworth and Pat Metheny.
The Dorian m7 sound
I choose to make these lines on a m7 chord. Mostly because it is a sound that is very common in both jazz standards and modal jazz songs. It is also very likely that you have some sort of vocabulary on a m7 chord so you can easily put the ideas to use.
The Holdsworth stack of 4ths
This lick starts with a stack of 4ths that is laid out as 2 notes per string with a string skip. This way of playing a quartal arpeggio that isn’t 1 note per string is something I picked up from Allan Holdsworths solo in this video: The Things You See It’s anyway a great solo!
For the rest the line consists of a variation of a melodic Cm cliche: 1 2 b3 5. In the line I play it descending and suspend the 1 with a chromatic leading note (B). The begining of the 2nd bar is a scale run which then is built around a Cm7 arpeggio that has some of the “gaps” filled up with scale notes.
The ending of the line is a built around a large interval skip of a b6. Having larger intervals in you lines can often work as signals. It is an easy way to let the note stand out. Since it is at the ending I am skipping up to a chord tone (the 5th).
Using different diatonic arpeggios
It is absolutely essential that you are able to use more diatonic arpeggios than just the one from the root when you are improvising. In this example I am using two of the other arpeggios that work well over a m7 chord. These arpeggios are found on the 3rd and on the 5th of the chord.
The line starts with a Gm7 arpeggio where the 5th and 7th of Gm7 are use to encircle the 3rd(Eb). From Eb I then continue up the Ebmaj7 arpeggio which then lands on the 1 of bar 2 with the D.
From the D the line first is resolved to the C chromatically before it continues down the Cm7 arpeggio to the 5th. From the 5th I continue with a stack of 4ths from C before the line ends on a G.
Chromatic enclosures and Pat Metheny’s parallel 3rds
In the last example I am starting with a chromatic enclosure. When you play lines it is important to have the melody connect with the chord. You can do this by having strong chord tones on the important beats in the bar. In this case I have the 3rd of Cm on the 3 of bar 1. I am using the chromatic enclosure to suspend the 3rd by playing a chromatic movement that then resolves to Eb.
From the Eb I play an Ebmaj7 arpeggio in a sequence that let’s me end on the D on the 1 of the 2nd bar. In the 2nd bar I start with an idea that I learned from Pat Metheny which is shifting down 3rds chromatically. From the Ab I can resolve back to a G and then end the line with a melody that is coming out of an Gm pentatonic scale. I finally end the line with on the 11th(F)
Compose lines with the material.
For most of us tt is important that we keep discovering and exploring new things like new types or choices of arpggegios or scale sounds. Using composition is a great way to develop this.
I hope you can use some of the ideas that I talk about in this lesson to come up with some new exciting lines and have fun integrating them into your own playing.
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In this weeks Q&A I will go over some questions on how to increase left hand speed, Auditioning for a jazz school, Sight reading, Allan Holdsworth and the length of my beard!
If you have any questions on guitars, effects, improvisation, technique or improvisation then leave a comment on my video or send me a message on Facebook or Instagram.
Contents;
My New Patreon Page
Sight Reading tips
Beard and tone!
Allan Holdsworth
Audition for Jazz School
Left Hand Speed
Check out my favourite Allan Holdsworth album: Sixteen Men of Tain: http://amzn.to/2lViW6q
0:11 Intro 1:01 My New Patreon Page 3:01 Sight Reading tips 11:15 Beard and tone! 12:02 Allan Holdsworth 19:13 Audition for Jazz School 25:26 Left Hand Speed 31:29 Outro
We are all looking for ways to lay down chords so that the harmony is presented in a rich and exciting way. Chord voicings with large intervals and a big range can be a very powerful tool to play long sustained chords that sound full but and still clear and interesting. Drop 2&4 voicings are a good way to approach this systematically and in this lesson I am going to go over how you can convert your Drop2 Voicings into Drop 2&4 voicings.
To use the material that I am going to cover in this lesson you are probably better off first knowing Drop2 voicings which are by many considered standard chord vocabulary for jazz. If you are not familiar with Drop2 voicings you can check out my lessons on it here: http://jenslarsen.nl/jazz-chord-essentials-drop-2-voicings-part-1/
The layout of this lesson is that I am first going to go over what a Drop 2&4 voicing is and then am going to explain how you can convert a drop2 voicing into a drop 2&4 voicing.
Build up of a Drop 2&4 voicing
If you look at the first D7 chord in example 1 you can see that it is a D7 as a stack of thirds.
Let’s number the notes from the top we get: 1(C), 2(A), 3(F#), D(4).
Means that we have 2 & 4 (the notes A and D) that we can drop down an octave (beat 2 of bar 1 and dropped down on beat 3 of bar 1).
If we then move the F# to another string to make it easy to play we have the drop 2&4 voicing that is shown on beat 4.
Since we don’t use the stacked 3rds and it’s inversion of the chords a lot on guitar (mainly beacuse they are virtually unplayable) It makes more sense to learn these voicings by starting with something we already know like the Drop2 voicings.
The drop2 voicing of the 1st chord is shown on beat 1 of bar 2. Since we already have the 2 dropped we just need to drop the 4 (which is of course still the D because the 2(A) has been dropped down already)
The rule to convert the drop2 voicing to a drop 2&4 voicing is to take the 2nd lowest note and drop that an octave.
The reason for creating the voicing this way is that we get a very consistent fingering where we have on string in the middle that is not used and we get a playable version of the voicing directly from the drop2 voicing that we already know.
The 4 main chord types as drop 2&4
If you look at the diatonic 7th chords in a major scale you have 4 basic types: Maj7, m7,Dom7 and m7b5. With those 4 types covered we have a good base to play most songs and we can also use them as a starting point when adding extensions or alterations.
In this lesson I am using chords from the key of G major to demonstrate the different chord voicings.
Now that we have the method described above we can take the inversions of the drop2 voicings and make drop2&4 voicings from them:
It is worth noticing that there are of course other ways to place the notes on the fretboard, but this method yields a complete and consequent way to work with the voicings which is why I have only used those fingering sets.
II V I progressions with drop2&4 voicings
To demonstrate how you can use the drop 2&4 voicings I have made three examples of II V I cadences in G major and used the drop 2&4 vocicings. Since the drop2 voicings behave just like the drop2 voicings we can apply the same rules for adding extensions and alterations.
The first example is a completely simple version of the II V I using the basic chord voicings around the 10th fret. I chose to resolve the dominant upwards even if it could have resolved to the voicing below as well. In this way the F# is moved up to G.
In the 2nd line I am still using basic voicings from examples 2-5 but now I am using the chord voicings from the 3rd of the chord to add a 9th to all the chords. For the Am7 I use Cmaj7, D7 an F#m7b5 and the Gmaj7 is played with a Gmaj7 voicing though I could make it into a Bm7 voicing by changing the G on the D string to an A.
The final example is making use of an altered dominant. The way I am coming up with the altered dominant voicing is described in this lesson: http://jenslarsen.nl/play-standard-2-types-drop2-chords/ It is in fact a m7b5 voicing from the 7th of the chord, so in this case it’s a Cm7b5 standing in for a D7alt.
For the rest the voicings are straight forward Am7 and Gmaj7 voicings as shown in example 2-5.
I hope you can use the examples and the voicings to create some interesting sounds and expand your voicing and sonic vocabulary. I think that given the construction and range of these chords they are better off being used as sustained long sounds than voicings you just use as you would normally to play chord stabs over a standard, but do experiment to find the use for it that suits you the best.
If you want to study the examples away from the video or article you can download a pdf here:
If you have any questions, comments or suggestions for topics or how I can make the lessons better then please feel free to leave on the video or send me an e-mail. That is the best way for me to improve my lessons and make thme fit what you want to hear.
