Allan Holdsworth

Allan Holdsworth - A Guitarist's Guide — Revised & Expanded Edition by Graham Tippett · instant PDF download

Allan Holdsworth played like no one else because he thought like no one else.

This book is the result of years spent reverse-engineering that thinking — not transcribing his licks, but uncovering the simple, almost childlike system underneath the impossible-sounding surface, and turning it into something you can learn and play.

Holdsworth threw out nearly everything guitarists are taught. No scale boxes. No CAGED. No modes. No tidy stacks of thirds. In their place he built a way of seeing the whole fretboard at once, where chords are just handfuls of notes drawn from scales, and a scale is one connected shape rather than five disconnected ones.

This Revised & Expanded Edition rebuilds the book around that core idea and goes far deeper than the first:

The "big scale" — learning each scale as one continuous map across the entire neck

Why you only ever learn one shape per scale, then rotate it into any key

Melodic minor as the workhorse of the Holdsworth sound, and the one shortcut that unlocks his "outside" playing

The hidden symmetry of the Dorian scale, and how it becomes a home base on the neck

Building chords out of scales the way a pianist would

Side-slipping into the "other 98%" of notes most players never touch

A full chapter of technical exercises, including a four-finger permutation matrix for the hand independence his lines demand

And five worked practice lessons that put the whole method under your fingers. Each one hands you a finished fretboard diagram and walks you step by step through Holdsworth's way of pulling chords and melodies straight out of a scale — from reading the big scale, to extracting voicings, to improvising lines, to doing it all with melodic minor and the symmetric diminished scale. This is no longer just a book to read; it's one to play through.

What you get: an instant-download PDF — the full, revised guide with every fretboard diagram and all five lessons, formatted for comfortable on-screen reading and clean printing. DRM-free and yours to keep: read it on any device, and print the lessons and diagrams to keep by the music stand. No app, no account, no expiry.

Whether you've worn out his REH video or you're simply curious how a guitar can be made to sing like a horn, this hands you the thinking behind the music — and the practice to make it yours — in plain English.

An independent, unofficial guide — not affiliated with or endorsed by Allan Holdsworth or his estate.