Chord Of The Week 22/4/17 - an A5add9add13(/E) from "Metal Fatigue" by Allan Holdsworth

bigjon

In Memoriam Allan Holdsworth, who died last Sunday, here comes another batch of Holdsworth chords. I did a series before, currently in the fourth post of the index linked below, but he invented a fair few, so there's many more to choose from! I think the chord that announced him to the world, especially the likes of Steve Vai and Yngwie Malmsteen, was the opening chord of the Metal Fatigue album. A contender for the best opening to an album ever! The track Devil Take The Hindmost off that album was included as a flexidisc with Guitar Player magazine, along with Steve Vai's transcription of the solo. After that, most serious guitarists had at least heard of him!

The chord is played as a simple A5 power chord x022xx (compare Boys Are Back In Town, Highway To Hell, Start The Car by Jude Cole, etc etc), but there are two pitch-shifts overlaid: a 4th below, giving E5 022xxx, and a second above, giving B5 x244xx.
Ideally then, the notes we would like to have in our gigantic power chord are:
E 0xxxxx - the 5th in the bass, giving an /E slash chord notation (missed out in my version)
A x0xxxx - the root (5xxxxx in my version)
B x2xxxx - the 9th (or 2nd - see last week's thread on D5add9add13!) - this note is doubled. (missed out in my version)
E xx2xxx - the 5th - this note is doubled. (x7xxxx in my version)
F# xx4xxx - the 13th
A xxx2xx - the root
B xxx4xx - the 9th (xxxx0x in my version)

The best compromise I have come up with for playing this on one guitar is to sacrifice the low E, so the /E slash chord indication has to go in brackets, and to miss out the lowest of the two B notes. The lowest A and the highest E move down a string and the highest B moves up a string, to give

A5add9add13(/E): 57420x

I can (only) just play this on my short scale guitar with the strap quite high!
You can see the chord being played, although the pitch-shifter is out of shot ;-), at 54:11 in this video:

bigjon

Chord Of The Week Index updated with 194 discussions at
http://www.thefretboard.co.uk/discussion/598/chord-of-the-week-index
The previous series on Holdsworth chords is in the fourth post.