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Post by funkle on May 18, 2020 14:44:38 GMT -6
As I understand it, when Bird emerged, his approach was very outlandish, and didn't fit into the traditional jazz definition very well. Aside from playing a traditional instrument, initially, his lines sounded as foreign as Allan's. And perhaps the same was true of Coltrane's modal approach. But with whatever socio-historic (is that a word?) thing that were going on, they became accepted by the the jazz community, and then went on to define a corner, or even the center of the genre. I often wonder if Holdsworth's approach was not that much more radical than Bird or Trane's, but rather the jazz community was just not as ready or willing to accept it based on whatever trends & biases existed at the time. Jazz in the '80s went more traditional (with the Marsalii), and there was a strong distaste for fusion.
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millions
New Member
I was a charter member of the old fuze-zone, but what good did that do me?
Posts: 26
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Post by millions on Jun 23, 2020 8:49:16 GMT -6
I think the departure that Holdsworth made is in the approach to scales and harmony, which leaves behind all the clichés of diatonic harmony, and is chromatic in nature, as is the guitar. Coltrane was one of the few who traversed this territory, although and argument could be made for Miles Davis.
...and it all boils down to Slonimsky's Thesaurus of Scales.
Jazz? Not diatonic jazz, like All The Things You Are, My Funny Valentine, and all that song-form derived structure we know as "standards." Maybe closer to "modal jazz," but more chromatic, less static, more changing. Away from roots and root movement, into a constantly shifting kaleidoscope of lines and harmonies. It ain't yer granpaw's jazz.
Is it blues? Less so. Maybe that's the key: it has no 'blues' as such in it. Holdsworth was so intent on avoiding what he saw as 'clichés' (much of it related to blues guitar), that he gradually went into totally chromatic territory. Notice that his later style (compared to what he did in Soft Machine) was completely devoid of string bending. That would have made it sound "too bluesy, too clichéd."
Even Coltrane, at his most chromatic, still has vestiges of blues expression in his playing; mostly because it was a saxophone, which is connected to breath and bending of notes, which is inherently expressive of what we might call "blues."
With Holdsworth, his low-action and light picking legato style, turns the electric guitar into a sustained barrage of notes which begins to resemble a 'guitar' less and less as he progressed, and more like a synthesizer.
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