Allan Holdsworth Quotes

Here, we’ve compiled a list of the best Allan Holdsworth Quotes. The wide variety of quotes available makes it possible to find a quote to suit your needs. You’ve likely heard some of the Allan Holdsworth Quotes before, but that’s because they truly are great.

As soon as I figured out I didn’t know anything about music, I was OK. It’s when I thought I could learn something that I was in trouble.

Allan Holdsworth

Jazz is something that’s constantly changing. Its sole purpose is to let people improvise, to let them solo differently each time they play. And that’s always been what I like best.

Allan Holdsworth

I went through a bad period where I was just not writing; I couldn’t create anything. I was out of ideas. But when I started playing on other people’s music, I realized how lucky I was to be doing this.

Allan Holdsworth

In essence, I feel I’m more jazz guitar player because I write vehicles geared for improvisation.

Allan Holdsworth

I’m a very tough critic of my guitar-playing. Sometimes I don’t even want to do it anymore.

Allan Holdsworth

You never really get to be good at anything.

Allan Holdsworth

It falls in all the cracks, from classical music to jazz,. Anywhere there’s a hole in the floor, my music falls through it. But that’s OK.

Allan Holdsworth

Whenever I watch a movie I like to imagine what sort of music I might compose for a scene, to create a particular kind of atmosphere, because when I see something I hear something.

Allan Holdsworth

We used to work with a promoter in Italy who used to book for shows with nine hour drives in between, so we got a new promoter.

Allan Holdsworth

If you fall in love with a woman, there’s this unknown thing that gives you a force and energy, and music is like that, too. If I lived to be 2000, I’d never know anything about music. And that’s great.

Allan Holdsworth

It’s not my personality to brag in any way or be pretentious. It’s just not my nature.

Allan Holdsworth

The electric guitar‘s a pretty cheesy thing when you think about it, still working on those bits of wire and magnets for its sound. It’s all of the things that are wrong with it that have made it the unique instrument it is.

Allan Holdsworth

I’d get another job before I would play music I don’t enjoy. But then, I’m really not qualified to do anything else.

Allan Holdsworth

The more you learn, the more you learn you don’t know.

Allan Holdsworth

When I practise scales I will play four notes on one string. If I’m playing a C major scale, starting on F, I’ll play the F, G, A, and B on one string and the C will be on the A string, etc, etc. Because I found not only was it good for my hands but it was really good for interconnecting things.

Allan Holdsworth

I started out in rock, but I didn’t want to stay there, and haven‘t.

Allan Holdsworth

The SynthAxe enables you to achieve a whole world of sonic textures that you cannot get with a guitar. There was nothing like it before and nothing like it since.

Allan Holdsworth

I don’t get a big recording budget or much promotion, but I have creative freedom.

Allan Holdsworth

It’s obviously flattering when somebody likes something one is doing. But at the same time, I get embarrassed about it. It’s the ‘I’m not worthy syndrome.’

Allan Holdsworth

I grew up listening to Ravel, Debussy, Bartok and jazz like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Cannonball Adderley, Charlie Christian and Django Reinhart. It was incredibly inspiring! And I was given a guitar and I said ‘What the hell is this?!’

Allan Holdsworth

There are good people in radio and the record companies, but there are others who are completely in the wrong job and holding music up in the process.

Allan Holdsworth

I don’t like playing to guitar players, actually. I’d rather just play to ordinary people.

Allan Holdsworth

For me, the only thing that makes one scale different from another is not the starting note; it’s the separation of the intervals.

Allan Holdsworth

I was working with another major label after Warner Bros, and they were telling me who to hire as musicians, what kind of music to play, what producer to use. I mean, what’s the point of putting me on the record?

Allan Holdsworth

I knew if I wanted to improvise over chord changes, I’d have to figure out all the scales that went with all those chords.

Allan Holdsworth

Record companies tell me to play something more commercial, but I don’t want to do anything else.

Allan Holdsworth

Bike riding is great for your thinking. I can’t say I’ve written an entire tune while cycling, but riding has definitely inspired songwriting ideas.

Allan Holdsworth

In a way, I think the whole business is pretty corrupt. It’s like anything else where people make a lot of money – it’s really hard for the little guy.

Allan Holdsworth

If the whole idea, in the original bebop days, was to get to soloing, then that’s all it should be about.

Allan Holdsworth

My music is written with one goal in mind: to improvise. It’s like explaining a great story in words, but without words, much faster than you could with words. It’s like a direct line of instantaneous communication where you don’t have to wait for the end.

Allan Holdsworth

Perhaps since I have been using the Synthaxe, it might have made it easier for people to listen to me, in a funny kind of way it takes for things to happen.

Allan Holdsworth

I think the guy who tells you he knows about music is really dumb, or he’s lying to himself.

Allan Holdsworth

My dad was a fine pianist and he had a lot of great records and beautiful music.

Allan Holdsworth