Allan Holdsworth is the guitarist other guitarists listen to right before quietly deciding to take up gardening instead. The man phrased like a saxophone, stretched his fingers like a cartoon, and used scales most of us can't even spell. So naturally I recorded a seven-second lick and called it an "Allan Holdsworth wannabe." Emphasis, lovingly, on wannabe.
Here's the confession baked into the title: this fluid, fusion-flavoured little run is, when you strip the reverb and the delusions of grandeur away, mostly a chromatic descending line. "Chromatic descending lick" would honestly have been a perfectly accurate name. But that doesn't summon the ghost of a legend, so here we are.
How this Holdsworth-style legato lick actually works
The trick is two ingredients doing all the heavy lifting. First, legato: hammer-ons and pull-offs instead of picking every note, so the line breathes as one long slur instead of a machine-gun of separate attacks — that liquid quality is 80% of the Holdsworth illusion. Second, a chromatic descending line: instead of stepping down a tidy scale, you slide down in half-steps, brushing past "wrong" notes so fast the ear reads them as tension, not mistakes. That's the same logic behind chromatic approaches — a foreign note earns its place if it resolves quickly to a chord tone.
The useful takeaway: you don't need an alien scale to sound sophisticated. Take any descending run, connect two of its notes with a chromatic passing tone, and play the whole thing legato. Suddenly your pentatonic lick has a suit and a fake résumé. It's the gateway drug to playing outside without getting lost.
Is it real Holdsworth? Absolutely not. Is it a genuinely fun way to smuggle chromaticism into your solos? Absolutely yes. Grab the tab and Guitar Pro file on Patreon and go impersonate a legend responsibly.