J.R.R. Tolkien inspired many people in many different ways. Here is a curated collection of rock music inspired by the worlds described in Tolkien's many works.
https://www.classical-music.com/rock/tolkien-in-rock
Thursday, February 12, 2026
Monday, November 18, 2024
Our Evacuation from the Mountains of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene
My article describing (in part) our experiences that led up to our evacuation from the North Carolina mountains after the catastrophic damage caused by Hurricane Helene.
Knowing that internet links have a habit of disappearing I’ll try to locate my original text that was submitted and post it here.
Our Evacuation from the Mountains of North Carolina after Hurricane Helene
- Nov 8, 2024
- Weather Band Content, Hurricanes, Severe Weather, Solo
- Rod Scott
We stood at the window in horror as the eighty-foot-tall tulip poplar, uprooted by the landslide, slid into the gorge and fell across the face of the dam. It was the second landslide we had witnessed that morning.
This is a small part of the road we used to evacuate from the B&B.
We were among six guests (three couples) at a Bed and Breakfast surrounded by the Pisgah National Forest who were sheltering in place because the road above and below the inn was impassable. Ten inches of rain had fallen in the two days before Helene came to impact the local mountains, which had brought down trees and power lines, triggered landslides, and washed out the bridge on the road below us.
A major landslide we had to slog through to hike out from the B&B
The loss of power (and water from the well) created its own problems, but the innkeepers were resilient and prepared. Once the rains slowed down, the generator was set up and gasoline was inventoried. To conserve gasoline it was decided to run the generator three times a day for just one hour so that water would be available. This also provided lights in the kitchen where food could be cooked on a gas stove.
Fortunately the inn had installed a Starlink internet system the year before and with a battery block powering the system we had internet capability. It was a unique experience to be trapped in the mountains with hours of internet capability each day! One couple had arrived in a Hybrid Highlander, and they set the car up to run in “generator mode.” This allowed the car to power one refrigerator 24/7. When the hybrid battery became partially depleted, the car would start and run to recharge the battery and then shut itself off. Connecting a power strip to the extension cord from the car allowed us to recharge cell phones and tablets. Careful computations suggested we could keep the refrigerator cold for seven to nine days using this setup.
We were far more fortunate than many others in the mountains. We had a roof over our heads, water, generator power, and we had communications. We used our internet connection to reach out to family and begin to make plans for our evacuation.
After five more inches of rain had fallen on Saturday, we rejoiced as Sunday dawned with blue skies and white cumulus clouds. It was the first sunshine we’d seen since Tuesday. On this day, one of the guests reconnoitered the local routes out of the area. He was gone for five or six hours and came back exhausted, but his information was invaluable. Regardless of the road damage that he found, he stated that evacuation was possible.
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A major washout on the asphalted part of the road we used to evacuate from the B&B.
On Sunday we made plans to hike out via the road on Tuesday and communicated that information to family and friends. When Tuesday dawned, we ate breakfast, and the six of us hugged the innkeepers and thanked them profusely for taking such good care of us. We left our cars, keys, and possessions (including clothing) behind and started hiking out with the clothes on our backs, water bottles, and snacks.
I’ve been hiking and backpacking in the woods for my entire life, but this was the most difficult hike I’d ever attempted. The first landslide almost stopped us as we climbed over downed trees and negotiated mud that was more than two feet deep. It took us over an hour to make it 300 feet. After a rest we proceeded the rest of the way up the mountain, slogging through mud and crawling over downed trees.
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A wooded stretch that became a river alongside the road. The water from this river overtopped the dam at the BnB, undercut the spillway and caused at least one landslide.
In spite of the obstacles and after three and a half hours we completed the two-and-a-half-mile hike, and were greeted and embraced by family. We were evacuated on October 1, five days after Hurricane Helene’s landfall.
Rehearsal
Written 5 or 6 years ago, found in DRAFT mode, and just now published.
Recently I've started rehearsing again. This time it is not singing, but playing the semi-modular synthesizer. During the last two and one half years of synth experimentation rehearsing played a very small part of my exploration of this music. Typically if I were to record a track on YouTube I'd rehearse two or three times and let her fly. My results typically revealed the lack of rehearsal. It was easy to argue that since this is modular synthesis there is a lot of room for "flexibility" (read: error).
For the past week or two I've been rehearsing for the possibility of being able to play publicly at an "open mic" event. We are not yet sure how much time we have to perform, but 10-15 minutes is the current guesstimate. I'm trying to pack the smallest synth footprint, so I'm limited to the Moog Mother32 stack (the Mother96), and one skiff. Additionally one midi controller and a set of headphones along with the mixer will complete the whole show. I'll need a small portable table, and and multi plug power distribution and one long stereo cable.
Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Good News on the Climate
Katherine Hayhoe is a well known climate scientist who is focussed on the opportunities that we as humans have to change our climate for the betterment of all humankind. Her newsletter always includes a "Good News" segment and it is always worth hearing some good news on this subject.
Her May 29, 2024 news letter is curated by a guest writer this month. Dr. Joellen Russell is on of the founders of Science Moms a group of mothers who are also climate scientists. The below extended quote is from that newsletter that came out today.
"Despite what you might think from listening to political advertising and more than a few media reports, US carbon emissions dropped last year at the same time that the economy grew.
Yes, that’s right! Last year, the US economy grew by 2.5 percent while the total carbon emissions by decreased by 2-3 percent, according to the US Energy Information Administration. US emissions are now down 20 percent from the all-time high in 2007, according to the EIA.
That’s not the only good news. Americans, on their own, are consistently choosing to save money by reducing their own energy costs, whether it is through more efficient lighting, electric cars, better windows, etc. Although per-capita emissions are still at the high end of the global scale, the US has gone from emitting around 20 percent of the global total of CO2 annually in 2000 to less than 12 percent of the global total in 2023."
It really appears that the changes both small and large are starting to make a measurable impact on the forces that are driving climate change. This is "Good News"! So share it with a friend or neighbor if you get a chance. Thanks for reading!
Thursday, May 09, 2024
RIP Charles Freddy Edgerton
Freddy and Jane on one of their recent adventures.
My post on FaceBook:
I was only 19 years old when I first met Freddy. As a confirmed introvert who preferred being a wallflower I met this guy who was confident and outgoing. At first he seemed “dangerous”, but it was soon apparent that I was mistaking dangerous for “daring”.
Our friendship, lasting 50 years, ended Friday May 3rd when Freddy left behind this physical world for the Next Great Adventure. It was one week ago today (Saturday April 27) that I spoke with Freddy and Jane in the ICU. Freddy was on oxygen but was coherent as we spoke. We discussed the trip Debbie and I were making in 2 days to Tybee Island. I also told him that I was composing a piece of ambient music for him. “It’s almost finished”, I told him.He said he was interested in hearing it when I got it finished. I told him he was going to be all right and that I loved him. He reciprocated with “I love you man”.
If I listed all of the small building blocks of my life that came into being exclusively because of Freddy it would take a while. Just a few: he taught me how to eat raw oysters, he taught me how to cook a steak on a grill, he introduced me to a broad palette of fine Kentucky bourbons, he was the first to put a special cigar in my mouth (a cigar made in a small island country South of Florida) and light it, he was the first person (that I knew of my age) who owned stock, he was the first to introduce me to the joys of hot peppers (there’s a great story behind that one).
If you knew Freddy from way back then, you knew he was one of the strongest people you’d ever meet. I still remember helping him move furniture on to a rental truck once. There were two of us on one end of this gigantic piece of furniture and we were about to die! He held up the opposite end with just one hand.
Freddy taught me a number of life lessons and one of them was the importance of having a generous spirit. He was a generous man and his example shaped me to a certain degree. While I never achieved his level of benevolence, he did push my needle in the correct direction.
In many ways Freddy was “bigger than life”, and one way I was reminded of that was when we hugged. Whether it was a greeting or a departure there was no better hug than a Freddy hug. It was like hugging and being hugged by Mount Everest and a benevolent bear at the same time. This I will miss.
The four of us travelled on the only cruise ship I’ve ever sailed on, Holland America’s Westerdam. This was an Alaskan cruise and it was a total blast. Being there with Debbie, Jane and Freddy made the trip perfect.
His love for his wife, children and grandchildren was absolute. We grew up with their kids and watched them mature into responsible adults. An untimely accident took Joshua’s life and while it altered the family landscape forever, this beautiful family carried on buoyed by their faith in God. Their daughter Loriahn has two sons and a daughter. Freddy and Jane loved being grandparents to those three.
This could carry on forever, but I’ll bring it to a close for now. Please pray for Jane, Loriahn, Eddie and the grandkids as they navigate these trying waters. May their memories of Freddy be a comfort to them during this season of grief.
Freddy will always reside in my heart and in my mind.
A link to the almost finished piece of music, called simply “C F E”, (after Freddy’s initials), can be found in the comments.
https://on.soundcloud.com/bfMCErybdKJNzdQ59
Sunday, November 26, 2023
Three Quotes from Isaac Asimov
Some people set up a false either-or dichotomy to simplify their argument or their world view. The truth of the matter (as Asimov explains) is that we inhabit a both-and experience.
“How often people speak of art and science as though they were two entirely different things, with no interconnection. An artist is emotional, they think, and uses only his intuition; he sees all at once and has no need of reason. A scientist is cold, they think, and uses only his reason; he argues carefully step by step, and needs no imagination. That is all wrong. The true artist is quite rational as well as imaginative and knows what he is doing; if he does not, his art suffers. The true scientist is quite imaginative as well as rational, and sometimes leaps to solutions where reason can follow only slowly; if he does not, his science suffers.”
Belief in belief is merely belief, not proof. Asimov explains what he believes in.
“I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be.”
Forcing another to adopt your belief is tyranny. Forcing your religion upon another is religious tyranny. Insisting that your religion govern others who do not have any investment in belief in your religion is abhorrent. Unfortunately there are unqualified people out there who want to insist you believe the way they do.
“Imagine the people who believe such things and who are not ashamed to ignore, totally, all the patient findings of thinking minds through all the centuries since the Bible was written. And it is these ignorant people, the most uneducated, the most unimaginative, the most unthinking among us, who would make themselves the guides and leaders of us all; who would force their feeble and childish beliefs on us; who would invade our schools and libraries and homes. I personally resent it bitterly.”
Isaac Asimov - The Roving Mind
Monday, May 29, 2023
Where can my music be found?
This post will likely be out of date sometime in the near future as more recordings are made but for this moment in time it is likely 95% correct and comprehensive. EDIT: Update on July 22, 2023 down below. EDIT: Update on August 31, 2023 down below. EDIT: Update on September 1, 2023 below.
1. Bandcamp - Where my albums are released
2.RADIO STATIONS (Live and Archived Shows)
WXPN 88.5 - "Stars End" - in Philadelphia PA, hosted by Chuck Van Zyl - Each Saturday 12 midnight - Sunday 5am Central Time
On these dates one of my tracks played:
(see playlists saved in another note)
WPRB 103.3 - "Music With Space" - In Princeton, NJ, hosted by Mike Hunter - Each Friday 10pm - Saturday 1am Central Time
WPPM 106.5 - "Sound + Vision" - In Philadelphia, PA, hosted by Tony DiPaolo - Each Wednesday 8pm to 9pm Central Time
On these dates one of my tracks played:
Modul303 - Internet Radio Broadcasting 24/7 from Berlin Germany
They play Stars End programs from Archive.org and Sequences Podcast programs and lots of electronic music from all around the world.
Mobile player: 5.1.70.22:8000/mobil-stream
3.SOUNDCLOUD -
Where I upload various music files, some of which make it to albums
4.PODCASTS
"Sequences Electronic Music Podcast" - Australia - produced by Mick Dundee Garlick
Apple iTunes
Sequences Podcast # 231 - my track "Binary Tydes" closes out the 3 hour show and starts at 2 hours & 52 minutes.
Sequences Podcast # 216 - my track "Alpha Centauri Cc " starts at 2 hours & 37 minutes
Amazon Music -
Sequences Podcast # 231 - my track "Binary Tydes" closes out the 3 hour show and starts at 2 hours & 52 minutes.
Search for Sequences Podcast # 216 - my track "Alpha Centauri Cc " starts at 2 hours & 37 minutes
5.JAM SESSIONS
I play a minor role in jam sessions with BAEMG (Birmingham Area Electronic Music Group).
Every two months the group gets together for a multi instrumental jam session.
Typically we record 3 jams a session.
Some of their recent jams are here:
https://soundcloud.com/user-290210481/baemg-20230121-jam-4 (actually jam 2 ?)
One of the most exciting aspects of this journey into electronic music is being associated with so many talented musicians. Everyone of them is way more talented than I. My focus is to try and learn from them as much as possible. I've got a long way to go and a short time to get there!
I hope you enjoy the music you find here.
On July 22, 2023 my album Galactik Tyde was uploaded to Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Music (iTunes)
On August 31, 2023 my album Elegia was uploaded to Distrokid who will upload it to Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Music (iTunes).
On September 1, 2023 my album Binary Tydes was uploaded to Distrokid who will upload it to Amazon Music, Spotify, and Apple Music (iTunes).
Sunday, March 12, 2023
My Poem “Full Moon Over Lake Livingston Texas” Honored by ALL POETRY Website
This was pretty surprising to receive and quite gratifying. I’ve “hidden”my poetry for most of the last 50 years. The only time before it was released to the world was my first book which was self published on Blurb. Published in 2011 the book “Noetic Furniture” is available in multiple formats.
This time I’ve selected online publishing because I’m 68 years old and if I don’t publish, this work may perish ;) I just started uploading to All Poetry in January and have not uploaded much of my work yet. The goal is to choose the works that I’d attempt to publish in a book and put them out there for the public.
I’ve already had an unexpected conversation with my friend Thomas (a musician and writer) who “caught” my first poetry upload quite randomly! What a surprise that was!
This is the link to my complete All Poetry collection under my name Nimrod Scott. While they added my poem to the ‘picks’ section today (and I don’t know how long it will stay there), I’ll link to it here so it will be a place where you can find other poetry judged worthy of this accolade.
Thursday, February 16, 2023
Some Anti War Songs From Way Back Yonder (60’s & 70’s)
Richie Havens - “Handsome Johnny”
Bob Dylan - “Masters of War”
Peter, Paul & Mary - “Where Have all the Flowers Gone”
Buffy Sainte-Marie - “Universal Soldier”
The Association - “ Requiem for the Masses”
The Byrds - “Draft Morning”
Eric Burdon & The Animals - “Sky Pilot”
The Hollies - “You Know The Score”
Barry McGuire - “Eve of Destruction “
Note: This is a list of performers and songs. In a few cases the songs were written by others (not the performer) and this list does not attempt to deny copyright in any way.
Art work attribution: https://www.bethelwoodscenter.org/blog/the-peace-symbol-woodstock-history
Monday, February 06, 2023
Allan Holdsworth - “The Worlds Greatest Unknown Guitarist”
Allan Holdsworth
“The world’s greatest unknown guitarist”
That subtitle has been used multiple times over the past 50 years. The first time I heard it was in reference to Roy Buchanan. In my youthful exuberance I embraced that moniker applied to Roy and shared it with others.
Over time I’ve come to realize that some of the most exotic guitarists typically flirted with jazz chording and tempos. Folks like Frank Zappa and John McLaughlin were seen and appreciated for their extraordinary talents. Other magicians of the fretted instrument were brought to my attention including Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen the Swedish guitarist. These wizards of the guitar played astonishing tracks that left my jaw agape. The beauty and complexities of their playing surely placed them upon an exalted plain.
Nearly six years after his death (APRIL 15, 2017) I discovered the music of Allan Holdsworth. After doing some preliminary research it is obvious that many top of the line guitarists saw that he and his work were in a class alone.
From the LA Times obituary found here:
https://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-allan-holdsworth-20170417-story.html
“Allan Holdsworth, an innovative and influential electric guitarist who helped shape everything from progressive rock to jazz over the past half century, died Sunday at his home in north San Diego County. He was 70.
Holdsworth, who the late composer and musician Frank Zappa once said deserved credit for “single-handedly reinventing the electric guitar,” played in a number of groups, from Soft Machine to the progressive rock band U.K.
His death brought immediate tributes from other musicians, including guitar star Joe Satriani, who tweeted: “R.I.P. Allan Holdsworth. You remain an enormous inspiration to me. Your beautiful music will live on forever.”
“Living Colour guitarist Vernon Reid tweeted: “How many guitarists, upon hearing #AllanHoldsworth the FIRST time, put their guitars in cases, NEVER to be opened again? Literally, Jaw Dropping.”
And former Dream Theater drummer Mike Portnoy tweeted: “RIP Allan Holdsworth... One of the all-time greats and innovators...no Holdsworth = no Eddie Van Halen #UK #OneOfAKind”
Whether playing a conventional electric guitar or a guitar synthesizer, Holdsworth soared. He created wonderfully distinct music that drew from jazz, rock and contemporary classical music. At his best, he came close to transcending all three.
Holdsworth’s astounding fluency was matched by the intense emotion he brought to his playing. He cleanly articulated every note, no matter how accelerated the tempo or deviously constructed the song structure. And, when playing ballads, he created gently swelling chords that made ingenious use of space and silence.
His advanced approach to harmony and his blindingly fast and intricate legato style left even some of the world’s greatest guitarists shaking their heads in awe.
“Allan plays things so advanced I can’t even understand some of it, and I’ve let him know that,” John McLaughlin told the San Diego Union-Tribune in 2003.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“An April 10 performance in San Marcos was the last of several Southern California shows he did, performances timed to celebrate the release of his two new Manifesto Records releases: “Eidolon: The Allan Holdsworth Collection,” a two-CD collection, and “The Man Who Changed Guitar Forever,” a 12-CD box set.
Zappa was not alone in his admiration of Holdsworth. “He is the best in my book,” Eddie Van Halen once said of Holdsworth. Guitarist Carlos Santana agreed, saying: “He has something totally beautiful. I give him more credit than anyone for just pure expression in soloing.”
“Holdsworth greatly impressed jazz guitar giant George Benson at a 1975 New York club date. “He sure has made an impression on me; he does things I have not heard the guitar do,” said Benson, who subsequently got Holdsworth his first solo record deal. “He’s not trying new things, he’s mastering them.”
“Holdsworth recorded his second solo album, “I.O.U.,” in 1980. He made at least 13 more albums over the next two decades, including 1985’s “Metal Fatigue.” Its title song has been credited by Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello as the single most influential piece of music that shaped his own guitar style. “It was the first time I heard someone go outside of the expected melodic parameters, and that sounded fantastic to me,” Morello told Music Radar.
Holdsworth also had a major impact as a guitar designer. His signature Holdsworth H2 semi-hollow electric guitar model has been a bestseller since Carvin Guitars of Escondido first began marketing it in 1996.”
====================================================
The New York Times obituary can be found here:
“Mr. Holdsworth forged a relentlessly exploratory approach to harmony, which he brought to bear on both the guitar and the SynthAxe, a guitarlike synthesizer that allowed him added control over his tone and flow. He had his own vocabulary of unorthodox chords, often involving far reaches across the fretboard. As a soloist, he executed lightning-fast melodies with remarkable fluidity.
Reviewing a performance by Mr. Holdsworth in 1983, The New York Times’s Jon Pareles wrote: “He pours out notes in a liquid rush without slurring a single one. His sense of harmony reveals itself in daring melodic extrapolations and in chords that are complex and impressionistic yet as transparent as folk music.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Intransigently committed to his own artistic vision, Mr. Holdsworth sometimes clashed with record labels. And though he was constantly self-critical and battled stage fright even into his later years, he drew breathless praise from many guitarists — including Frank Zappa and Eddie Van Halen, both of whom considered him to be at the top of the class.
Mr. Holdsworth never thought much of his reputation as a musician’s musician. “I don’t like playing to guitar players, actually. I’d rather just play to ordinary people,” he said in a Canadian television interview in the 1980s. “But obviously it’s difficult with this kind of music because no one ever really gets a chance to hear it, because radio won’t play it. Because it’s not jazz, they don’t really know what to call it, so they don’t know where to put it.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Throughout his life, he continued to prefer the sound of wind instruments. (He also taught himself the violin.) To avoid a choppy, percussive sound, he never strummed the guitar, even when playing chords. Instead he plucked each string with a separate finger. When playing lines, he avoided picking with his right hand, often letting his fretting hand do the work.”
==================================
The Guardian obit can be found here:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/apr/19/allan-holdsworth-obituary
“Allan Holdsworth, who has died aged 70, was a contrary kind of guitar hero – one given to implying that he would rather have played the saxophone, who disliked the sound of much of his own work and who chose anonymity for much of his long career over star status. But if Holdsworth, a stern-faced, tentacle-fingered and all-but-motionless onstage performer, was a private and self-critical individual, some of the world’s leading guitarists in rock, pop and jazz held different opinions about him, and often expressed them in terms closer to declarations of devotion than simply technical admiration.
Frank Zappa regarded Holdsworth as a gamechanger for the electric guitar, a player who perfected blazingly fast techniques without sacrificing character, naturalness or emotion. The smooth-jazz hitmaker George Benson, ostensibly the edgy Holdsworth’s musical opposite, said: “He’s not trying new things, he’s mastering them.” The hard-rock virtuoso Eddie Van Halen revered him, and the former Deep Purple guitarist Joe Satriani told Guitar Player magazine that “his brilliant approach to harmony is completely original, beautiful and spellbinding”. The guitarist John McLaughlin has wryly admitted he would have been happy to borrow just about anything his fellow Yorkshireman invented, if only he could have figured out how it was done.”
“Holdsworth played in some of the most original hybrid bands drawing on jazz, prog rock and early electronica in the 1970s. He preceded those achievements by devoting three years of his early 20s to the exhaustive personal reappraisal of scales, intervals and chords (he once said his notes from the process wound up “five phonebooks high”) that made his improvising sound so mysteriously different, and his unusually large hands and long fingers allowed him to bridge intervals more acrobatically than most guitarists could.”
~~~~~~~~~~
“2001, Holdsworth unveiled a torrent of labyrinthine guitar jams over hard funk undertows to a mesmerised crowd at Ronnie Scott’s club, London, while sometimes veering into bugged-guitar electronic tone-poetry and elegiac violin-like passages of an orchestral complexity and richness. But he issued no more recordings after 2003, preferring the immediacy of live performance.”
=============================
NPR wrote here:
“Allan Holdsworth, a spellbinding guitarist who influenced generations of jazz and rock musicians with his innovative sound, has died unexpectedly at age 70.
His daughter Louise Holdsworth announced his death on Sunday, prompting an outpouring of grief as well as high praise for an artist who not only changed the guitar, but also created a musical language entirely his own.
Holdsworth emerged as a promising and original player in the late 1960s and early '70s. But he hit his stride in the mid-'70s, with sideman appearances in major groups on the jazz-fusion and prog-rock circuits. He succeeded John McLaughlin in a new incarnation of the Tony Williams Lifetime, and also worked with Soft Machine, Pierre Moerlen's Gong, and fusion violinist Jean-Luc Ponty.
His late '70s collaborations with drummer Bill Bruford (of Yes and King Crimson fame) proved especially strong: Bruford's albums Feels Good to Me, One of a Kind and The Bruford Tapes find Holdsworth in wizardly form both as a soloist and a cog in a bracingly tight ensemble. Holdsworth also joined Bruford (and the late John Wetton) in the supergroup U.K., issuing one of the landmark guitar solos of his career on the track "In the Dead of Night."
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“Holdsworth's unusual scale runs brought a whole new perspective to the fretboard; they were colored by rock distortion but had an almost flute-like beauty. Jazz guitarist Kurt Rosenwinkel, in a 2005 interview with this writer for JazzTimes magazine, said this of Holdsworth:
To me, he's the only guitarist dealing with the kind of language Coltrane was dealing with — those long Slonimsky patterns that evolve differently through different registers in a very precise way, but pure like a prism. That's a big part of what I hear, that clarity of harmonic unfolding and melodic intricacy.
Holdsworth's chordal language, in its sheer imagination and otherworldliness, set his music even further apart. Unlike the solos, the chords were voiced with a clean, glass-like reverberating tone. They involved extreme finger stretches required in no other kind of music. They brought out strange intervallic combinations: on "Looking Glass," from Atavachron, two notes on the lowest strings and two on the highest strings, with nothing in between. Reaching for the Uncommon Chord was the title of a 1987 book of Holdsworth transcriptions, and for good reason.”
=====================
The San Diego Union-Tribune
“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.”
Holdsworth recorded his second solo album, “I.O.U.,” in 1980. He made at least thirteen more albums over the next two decades, including 1985’s “Metal Fatigue.” Its title has been credited by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello as the single most influential piece of music that shaped his own guitar style.
“It was the first time I heard someone go outside of the expected melodic parameters, and that sounded fantastic to me,” Morello told Music Radar.
Some admirers at least partially credited Holdsworth’s extraordinary guitar prowess to his unusually large hands, which enabled his fingers to make extra-long stretches on the neck of his instrument. But it was his conceptual approach that truly made him unique.
“I realized that most guitar chords are only four notes, though it’s possible to play six,” Holdsworth told the Union-Tribune in 2002. “So it made me look at the whole thing in a different way, and I started looking at chords as coming from scales, and not the other way around. Then, when I was in my early 20s, I figured out a system to catalog every combination of notes. I used basic math to make a catalog of all these scales. And then I would name them differently, using symbols.
After each symbol is a huge diagram of the whole guitar fingerboard. It’s just based on recognizing the differences between intervals. It took me two to three years to compile, and I have this huge catalog that is five phone books high. But I don’t use any form of math in the music at all; this (catalog) is the work part to learn things. The way I play is the opposite of that. Other musicians look at it, and then look at me like I’m kind of crazy, which I probably am. But they are curious about it.”
He also had a major impact as a guitar designer. His signature Holdsworth H2 semi-hollow electric guitar model has been a bestseller since Carvin Guitars of Escondido first began marketing it in 1996.”
============================
https://kennethwoods.net/blog1/2017/04/19/no-place-to-call-home-an-appreciation-of-allan-holdsworth/
“I first encountered Holdsworth as an ambitious young guitar player. Even then, in what in retrospect was his heyday, he was the kind of musician described as “the best guitarist you never heard of.” I immediately loved not only his playing but his music. Even when listening very casually, one could tell that it was incredibly harmonically sophisticated, melodically engaging and amazingly well played. One thing that struck me almost immediately was the sheer beauty and lyricism of his music- qualities not often found in virtuoso electric guitar players. He struck me then as much more of a guitar Debussy than a guitar Shostakovich.”
“From early days of listening to his music for pleasure I gradually moved on to listening more and more analytically and critically, then, bit by bit, trying to understand what he was doing. Holdsworth may have been music’s greatest iceberg. What you see on first glance is beautiful, massive, impressive and even intimidating, but what lies beneath the surface is simply beyond belief.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“Later on, during my years at Indiana University, I went through a period of deep disillusionment with classical music. At that time, I often wished I could be a jazz musician. I was completely immersed then in the 60’s jazz of Miles Davis 2nd quintet, Wayne Shorter, John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock. Working with David Baker in the IU jazz department, I felt like I started to understand the music well and to form solid ideas about improvisation. However, as David Baker knew probably better than anyone, the cello is no instrument for jazz. And for all its pedigree as a jazz instrument, neither is the guitar. When one listens to the solos of people like Trane, Miles, Woody Shaw, Sonny Rollins and Joe Henderson, you realise they were all able to develop single-note improvisation with a kind of agility, ease and expressivity that not even the best guitarists could approach. Even the cream of the crop of 70’s and 80’s fusion guitarists working with Miles or Freddie Hubbard often ended up sounding like amateurs next to their horn-playing colleagues. In their defence, it wasn’t entirely their fault. Saxophones and trumpets are near-ideal instruments for jazz improvisation. The guitar is not. None of the guitar greats of the 60’s, 70’s or 80’s could approach the kind of expressive ingenuity and creative freedom of a John Coltrane.”
“None of them, that is, except Allan Holdsworth. Holdsworth seemed not to be bound by the same laws of physics that limited every other guitarist from Django Reinhardt to George Benson. For him, picking didn’t seem to exist. Changing strings didn’t seem to exist. Shifting positions didn’t seem to exist. The notes simply flowed out of the guitar as they might from a scat singer possessing Messiaen’s harmonic knowledge with a four octave range on speed. Harmonically, he was simply in a different league to any other jazz guitarist of his generation. He might well have been the first guitarist to really completely escape the blues-box cliché. His improvisatory language was distinctive- one always knew it was him, but largely because it was so easy to recognise the lack of repetition, the lack of pre-planned licks, the lack of fall-back BS. Holdsworth seemed to be happiest playing in the higher extensions of a chord- weaving patterns around the 9th, the sharp 11th and the 13th. The upshot of this approach was that when he did settle melodically on the root or the fifth of the chord, it sounded somehow new, even a bit exotic.”
=========================
Other Sources:
An Allan Holdsworth Wiki:
http://fingerprintsweb.net/ahwiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Tuesday, November 15, 2022
The Flower Ornament Scripture ( Avatamsaka Sutra)
Two months before Arwen died and just before our water disaster a box appeared on my front doorstep. It contained a book that I’d been wanting to read for about twenty five years. Rendered in English by the astonishingly prolific translator Thomas Cleary, the Avatamsaka Sutra, better known as The Flower Ornament Sutra is one of the largest books I now own. This edition is between 1,600 - 1,700 pages in total with the actual translated sutra running 1,463 pages. This massive tome is actually 39 sutras collected together. Some are very short (under 20 pages) the longest is hundreds of pages.
This is the most mind blowing religious text I’ve ever read. Words practically fail me when I attempt to relate so I’ll borrow Robert Thurman for a little bit and let him speak of it here:
“When I recommend the book to a student, I always warn them, “Don’t try to read this text, to get through it, get the message, the point, file it in your memory as saying this or that and so on. You have to swim through it, bathe in it, let your mind’s eye visualize its extraordinary visual explosions and implosions, let the text take you into it, into the realm of its inconceivable liberation itself.
The Flower Ornament is a sacred book, in the Buddhist sense. It is the doorway into the Realm of Reality, the reality witnessed by enlightened beings whose vision is no longer clouded by egocentric addictions. It manifests the sacred through its expressions, communicating from the Buddha’s mind to our minds the vision he first obtained under the tree of enlightenment.”
And further down the page he says this:
“It is said that all other sutras subsequently taught were adaptations of this overwhelming revelation, which was apparently too much for most people, gods, and other mythic beings. The revelation of this sutra is the direct encounter with the completely perfect buddha-verse of enlightened beings. It is initiatory, beyond esoteric and exoleric. It is immediate, beyond sudden and gradual. Its very existence as a text that we can read, that can empower our imagination to enter into the total goodness that embraces everything and always has and always will, is itself an inconceivable liberation.”
[both quotes from: https://tricycle.org/magazine/flower-ornament-scripture/ ]
Thank you Robert for putting it into perspective! All I can say is it is mind blowing. Thomas Cleary wrote a 55 page introduction that is essential to reading the text. He refused to footnote the text because he said the footnotes would interrupt the flow of the text and rob the effect of the rhythm of the endless descriptions and endless experiences that flow like Niagara Falls over the abyss.
This book shows that the phrase "billions and billions" existed before Carl Sagan and indeed in the Flower Ornament Sutra the universe is described in numbers well beyond billions including trillions and quadrillions. That is in terms of atoms, and atomic particles and the numerous emanations of Buddha within every microscopic and sub atomic particle.
I read this book in bites and nibbles. Each snack like meal is a virtual psychedelic feast of the imagination.
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