"The Sixteen Men of Tain" Lesson

For guitarists in the know, Allan Holdsworth represents the pinnacle of musicianship. With an incomparable compositional and improvisational style combined with a sense of humility bordering on pathological, Holdsworth was a singular figure; one that is often imitated but rarely, if ever, matched.

I came to know him my senior year of high school, in 2001. At the time, I was really into John McLaughlin, and Al Di Meola. Through Di Meola and Return to Forever, I started listening to more Chick Corea, and through Corea's Elektric Band, I discovered Scott Henderson and then Tribal Tech. Henderson became a near instant hero to me, which led me to search out any info I could find on him. Of course, at the time I was subscribed to virtually every guitar publication on the planet, and in one of them I read an interview with Henderson in which he mentioned Holdsworth.

I was vaguely aware of the name. A friend had loaned me one of Bill Bruford's albums -- I think it was "Feels Good To Me," maybe? Though I now love Bruford's solo outings, it wasn't my thing at the time for whatever reason. But Henderson's praise for Holdsworth piqued my interest, so one weekend after my shift at Blockbuster Video, I drove to Tower Records and bought "The Sixteen Men of Tain," which was his newest release.

Honestly, upon hearing the first track, "San Onofre," my first thought was, "What the fuck is this??" It sounded like something from a bad 80s sci-fi movie. Little did I know that I had just had my first taste of the Synthaxe, and I did not care for it one bit. I still don't like it to this day, but that's besides the point.

The next track, "0274," was much more to my liking, but the third track, that stopped me dead cold. This track, of course, was "The Sixteen Men of Tain." I probably listened to it ten times in a row. The chord voicings, and that solo...oh baby. I wasn't educated enough as a musician to understand what was going on, but later I came to understood how that solo embodied everything that makes a solo worth listening to; pacing, phrasing, tension, drama, interplay. It's all there.

Now I had no clue how Holdsworth was doing what he did. I had my suspicions. Clearly he was playing legato (though I didn't know it was called that at the time), but I just couldn't get that flowing sound out of my hands. By then, my personal technique was an amalgamation of McLaughlin, Di Meola, Martino, Benson, and Metheny -- in other words, fairly far-removed from Holdsworth's approach. And remember, this was before YouTube. It wasn't until my junior year of college when I bought the Galaxy Theater concert DVD from a website called Audiophile Imports that I actually got to see what his hands were doing. And by then, I was knee-deep in my music studies and my picking technique was pretty firmly in place.

These days my legato technique is better, but it's still not what I would consider to be adequate enough to tackle Holdsworth's solos. However, that doesn't mean I can't transcribe, perform, and more importantly, teach his compositions!

So here's the next episode in my "(Almost) No Talking Lessons" series, "The Sixteen Men of Tain," by Allan Holdsworth. Fair warning, there's actually a good amount of talking, but there's a lot to talk about! Below you will find the lesson, as well as a zip file containing a gear guide, a transcription of the piece, an analysis of the chords in the solo section with scale suggestions, and a Yamaha UD-Stomp preset and parameter list. Enjoy!

The Sixteen Men of Tain Lesson.zip

Download ZIP • 1.57MB