Video

While a lot of Allan’s work could be pulled for Fredrick’s inspiration, especially early on, I feel like this song in particular has a lot of moments that make me think “ok damn I see why Fredrick dug this so hard” especially in some DEI tracks. Excited to try and learn this one 🔥

3:50:00 such an important pattern opened up my understanding so much!

This world needs more people like you

Great job! Those chords couldn't have been easy to pick out

John, question…. What UD/Magic Stomp AH preset do you prefer for the Allan chords clean tone? I have noticed that AH Chorus 1 is great for spaciousness, a la the Em chord scale section on Letters of Marque for example, but where chords are moving faster, less spaciousness, Chorus 2…(as in the A section) of Letters of Marque, for example.

Thank you for making this video, as always. But please.... where did you find this at 6:12?

Btw, I am attempting a Tone One capture of the AH Lead patch, until then I have a ToneNet download of that Magic Stomp lead patch, not quite there, but close. Hence the capture, which will be practically exact… BTW, Line 6 Yamaha really needs to release the UD / Magic Stomp delays / chorus algorithms / patches, they are over 20 years old, sound great , and there’s nothing else on the market that matches it

Ok, I finally got a MS. New old stock, in box, never used since 2005. It was on firmware 1.x. Note: one for sure will NEED the Yamaha USB MIDI driver. Windows will not see the MS without this driver. And Yes one can use Windows 11. Installed that driver (from Yamaha), Windows saw it, launched MidRadio app > Options and the UB99 (the MS) was available as a Selection. Dropped the new firmware file on the MidRadio app and firmware was Upgrading to v2.1. Installed the MS App that Transfers presets between the computer and thew MS. Uploaded the AH Presets, all set. You will never need the CD so forget about anything on the CD. There is also macOS app called "MagicStompFrenzy" that is supposed to work on macOS, although I was getting errors...One observation / question, it seems you cannot just ADD one or a few Presets from the software, it's Always a bulk dump of All Presets, yikes, watch out for Overwriting. Now one thing I am going to try. I already have this AH lead / gain sound and I am going to do a Capture to Tonex (One). Tonex can capture any amp or gain / drive device. So the drive / gain patch can be on the Tonex, offloading it from the MS, and MS can the be used for AH's Delay / Time effects on this lead patch....

I showed this to my guitar teacher once and it made his day, thank you, he already passed away now but at least I got to learn and share my passion about guitar, also Deep Purple and Allan Holdsworth, cheers, this brings back great memories

Thanks for your hard work on all these tutorials. I'm using this to help me learn this on piano because I'm better at piano and it's much easier on piano haha. A couple chords that I think are worth pointing out though from a jazz perspective, especially considering the bass guitar's notes on the I.O.U. recording, are at 21:36 - with the bass playing an F, it becomes actually a pretty standard jazz voicing for an F7#5#9 - and at 19:16 & 26:23 - those are what my jazz instructor would have simply called a "tonic diminished sound", characteristic of the whole-half diminished scale rather than the more common half-whole diminished scale, characterized by a diminished triad with a major 7 on top, which can indeed also be written as a slash chord: a major triad with the b9 in the bass, like you said. The voicing at 26:23 simply adds the second scale degree of the whole-half diminished scale as an extension on top. Just the way I saw them. Regarding what you call the chords, it can't matter too much anyways because of Allan's own world of harmony he created separate from the world of standard music theory, but once I added what the bass guitar plays on the recording, it often changed the chord names, sometimes to more reasonable names. But still, those don't matter much, partly because there is of course no bass on "At The Edge" on the album with Gordon Beck anyways.

dang you did that all E chord like it was nothing

Thank you for this tutorial Greg. Much appreciated.

Enjoyed this one a lot. Thank you!

Good shit my dude!!! you really did the work for all of us.

As a mediocre, self-taught bassist I noticed that learning from video tutorials and playthroughs is a bit easier if you download the clip and rotate it 180 degrees. There may be some browser addons that let you do that without downloading. That way your brain doesn't need to subconsciously invert the image to make it look the way YOU see it when you're playing the instrument. P.S. Meshuggah is the shit and I was lucky enough to see them 5 times already.

John,I am assuming the harmonizer is a Magic Stomp patch, which one?, thx

I could play all of them without much trouble, however, smoothly switching between the harder ones in time and without buzz… that’s a different story. How he could just effortlessly go to these chords as if he’s switching to an open E minor is just crazy.

Very good job , thanks a lot

healp. I reach to the point that the magic stomp says now waiting. I download the midi driver and the midi radio (and select the yamaha ms1 on it) i drag the file ub99mk2 but nothing is happening on the magic stomp, it keaps on now waiting

Hey, where can i download the firmware UB99 Midi firmware from? I have an acoustic one that i want to convert to electric. thx.

This is fascinating. What's particularly amazing is how Allan frequently used chords that most of us could play - albeit with the easier inversions! Suddenly the incredible musical ability of this brilliant musician is even more apparent. Great job all round.

Thank you so much for making this beautiful music so easy to learn for all of us!

Worrying that going in depth on Allan’s musics will cause you to lose the magic, is like worrying you won’t find Bach as godlike once you learn his music. It won’t happen. The white rabbit hole only goes deeper, and the divine light only gets brighter. Wonderful wonderful video. Thank you so much. So much hard work.

Lmao as a guitarist, with the barring+stretching, I'd rather play these chords on piano. Great video though.

Great lesson! Endomorph by allan holdsworth next?

The amount and quality of work you put in this video is astonishing. Thanks so much for sharing. it will be useful for generations of musicians.

I don't think this analysis denigrates Holdsworth, it validates him as an absolute master of the instrument.

What an incredible body of work. Bravo man. This is truly incredible.

The surprised look when you nail the tapping 😂

I read that he wanted to play saxophone, but couldn't afford one. It seems that he made the guitar become one.

Dude just casually mentions how he knows Frederick a few times. A great lesson, this channel is gold.

Hell yes! This one is next on the list

Amazing, wanted to learn this for ages

I am still watching the video... had to comment... Allan devised his own system of mathematical and geometrically connected music notation. -- Honestly, before this I have always been a straight ahead jazz lover, Joe Pass, Barney Kessel, etc... and I never really "got" Holdsworth. I just watched a live video of his and he is also using a guitar synthesizer. I had one of the very first ARP Avatar guitar synthesizers in around 1979-80... I recewntly bought a new Roland GR-55 guitar synth, but it is so new I don't have the pickup mounted yet. -- That got my attention, then he turns off the synth, and flies through these who the hell knows what he is doing single notes, LOL... Thank you for the time you have spent putting together this video. Now I am starting to "get it" about him...

Thank you very much Greg for this awesome tutorial for Afterlife as well as the rest of the songs from the first album. It is much appreciated!.

I can't get over the m6/9th chords at the beginning at the song, AH is truly the Shakespeare of chords in my personal opinion, his chord vocabulary is huge!

Great. Wish I understood more.

4:27:12 Forest of Feeling Solo intro lick pt. 1 3:53:01 Forest of Feeling Solo intro lick pt. 2

Used his recto for 16 men of tane and hardhat area. He might’ve been experimenting during recording And live with the DG while he was getting used to it Used the roland instead of synth axe The UD stomp and the magic stomp was based on his settings for the rack mounted 8x D 1500s although he did he use a Roland SDE 2000 in place of one of the Yamaha D1500s towards the end of using the rack 12:42 Which I have from his studio from the late 90s At one point, he used up to 10 five and five He used them in live mode where you could set three presets-one per foot switch So he had 30 presets 15 clean and 15 lead presets available (Including any swell, option) at any given moment for him to use and he didn’t like things on the floor so he put them up above the rack -so it wouldn’t clutter his space on stage

Used his recto for 16 mins of tame and hardhat area. Use the roland instead of synth axe not because he didn’t like the sound of his guitar The UD stomp and the magic stomp was based on his settings for the rack mounted D 1500 Which I have from his studio late 90s

Allan Holdsworth... Cacophony's Saturation Point... DT... I can't find words to express my gratitude. You and Romanova are really pioneers in this full-album-analysis format. Channels like yours are *REALLY* helping. Thank you. May I humbly suggest that one day you tackle the _Truth In Shredding_ album ? I suspect you might be one of the very few people in the world would could explain what Gambale and Holdsworth are doing on this gem. Bless you.

Hey John! This is random, but at 34:54 I noticed that this section of Grey Day doesn't appear on the souncloud version uploaded by Gary Husband. Do you have access to an alternate version? Only asking as I am trying to transcribe it myself and rework it in my DAW, thanks!

nice chord changes

I had to listen to this again - I'd love to see tablature/notation of this piece. I tried to do it on standard guitar with octave divider but the only way I can think of doing it would be guitar synth with the bottom half of the guitar bass and organ and the top 3 strings clean tone guitar with chorus and compression and delay. But I'm far from doing it but it's a long term goal.

I'm so glad you were able to break this piece down. I think it's the most underrated track in their entire discography. I had a really hard time trying to understand all the parts and I've never found anyone playing it on yt. I also really liked your way of teaching. Congrats!

4:48 Breath controller.

Thank you!

It was a blast to open for these guys last night at the Art Bar in Columbia, SC!

Regarding the major scale modes sections: So you still need to memorize a different fingering pattern for each mode? I'm confused on how relating each mode to D Dorian or C Ionian somehow simplifies things. (I do not know much at all about theory)

I've watched your evolution. You have eclipsed the players that are obsessed with notes per second. You are the professor. You have increased the scholarship of the post-modern music that Allan created.