The Guitar Plugged · Guitarist Index
Allan Holdsworth
Solo / UK / Soft Machine
1969–2017
Fusion · Jazz · Progressive
The most harmonically advanced guitarist rock ever produced, and the least imitable.
Main guitar
Charvel and Carvin custom builds; the SynthAxe
Signature sound
Impossibly smooth legato with chorused, saxophone-like sustain
Era
1969–2017
Influence
88 / 100
Genre
Fusion / Jazz / Progressive
Why they matter
The most harmonically advanced guitarist rock ever produced, and the least imitable.
Holdsworth wanted to play saxophone and could not afford one, so he built a guitar technique that behaved like a wind instrument: almost no picking, enormous stretches, and legato lines that move through chord scales most guitarists cannot name.
His chord voicings are equally alien — wide-interval clusters derived from his own harmonic system rather than from standard guitar shapes, which is why they sound like keyboard writing.
Eddie Van Halen, Frank Zappa, Vai and Petrucci all cited him as untouchable. He remained a cult figure commercially, which frustrated everyone except, apparently, him.
The sound
Impossibly smooth legato with chorused, saxophone-like sustain
Devil Take the Hindmost
Saturated but soft-attack lead — the pick is essentially absent, so the tone has no transient spike.
The Sixteen Men of Tain
Clean, chorused chord work where the wide voicings need absolute clarity.
Metal Fatigue
The most rock-adjacent tone he recorded, and still smoother than anything around it.
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Style & technique
How you recognise the playing
Extreme legato
Long phrases played almost entirely with the fretting hand for a seamless, breath-like line.
Wide-interval voicings
Chords built from his own scale system, with stretches that require exceptional hand span.
Chord-scale improvisation
Soloing derived from scales he assigned to each chord rather than standard modal practice.
SynthAxe work
Guitar-controlled synthesis used for genuinely orchestral textures in the late 1980s.
The rig
Instruments, amplification and effects
- Charvel custom
- Carvin H2 / HF2 Holdsworth models
- Steinberger
- SynthAxe
- Hartley Thompson
- Yamaha and Mesa/Boogie in various eras
- Rockman-based rigs
- Lexicon and Eventide rack processors
- Heavy chorus and delay
- Rotary emulation
- Seymour Duncan custom humbuckers
Essential listening
Where to start
- 011985
Devil Take the Hindmost
Allan Holdsworth · Metal Fatigue
- 021985
Metal Fatigue
Allan Holdsworth · Metal Fatigue
- 031982
Tokyo Dream
Allan Holdsworth · I.O.U.
- 042000
The Sixteen Men of Tain
Allan Holdsworth · The Sixteen Men of Tain
Career landmarks
The moments that mattered
Van Halen's endorsement
Eddie Van Halen called him the best in the world and helped get him a major-label deal.
SynthAxe pioneering
The most musically convincing use of guitar-driven synthesis ever recorded.
The legacy
Lineage
Influenced by
John Coltrane
Charlie Parker
Django Reinhardt
Influenced
Adjacent players
More from the archive
The restless technician who kept reinventing what an electric guitar could be.
The master of the long note — space, sustain and perfect note choice.
Endless sustain, Latin rhythm, and one of the most identifiable single notes in music.
Classical menace and baroque runs welded to the heaviest rock of the early '70s.
One homemade guitar, a sixpence, and the most orchestral guitar sound in rock.
The greatest rhythm guitarist in rock, playing lead parts by refusing to.