Scott Henderson Discussion

[sermorel]

Hi Scott.

First of all, congratulations on the new album ! Vibe Station is amazing !!

I was wondering : what is your aproach when layering guitar parts at home ? Dou you work on the sounds till it matches with the sounds you're hearing in your head or you leave some stuff to mix time ?

I know some players who choose to wait for the mix to add some effects as reverbs and delays,but I've had some hard times recording some parts trying to imagine what it will sound later on. Depending on the part, adding a specif effect will change the way you play the guitar.

I presume that you record some stuff in your home studio but mix somewhere else, am I right ?

Thanks a lot !!

[Scott Henderson]

Thanks - glad you like the record! The layering process, as well as the mix between all the guitar tracks, was finished before the real mix started. It's a lot of time spent searching for the right sounds for the parts, to compliment what's already there without sounding cluttered. I'd say more time was spent looking for sounds than playing notes. The delays and reverbs for the guitar tracks were also finished before the mix. There are usually several delays used on each tune, and assigned to the guitar parts depending on how long the space is between phrases.

We mixed everything at home using bounce to disk. That's the best and easiest way to mix, as long as there's no external hardware involved, which on our project there wasn't. All the EQ, compression and FX are plug-ins, mostly Waves, Lexicon, and Sound Toys.

The only problem I had with plug-ins, was that they modulate on their own. You can sync the tempo of the modulation with the song, but not the stereo imaging. So I had to use bounce to disk to capture the performance of the plug in, and sometimes that took 5 or 6 bounces to finally get what I wanted.

Alan's job as engineer was to EQ the bass and drums, and mix them with the already finished guitar tracks, but there were times when he further EQ'd the guitar tracks too. Some of my parts needed to be more scooped so they wouldn't take up so much space in the mix, and he helped me decide if a track needed to be more or less bright. He also created some better choruses than the ones I programmed.

[sermorel]

Speaking of plugins, I've just got Soundtoys' Echoboy.

Amazing delays !!

Have you tried that, Scott ??



Best regards !

[Scott Henderson]

I used EchoBoy on the last three albums - it sounds better than my vintage Echoplex. I think it's the best deal for the money in the recording world. I'm amazed by how much work must've gone into creating all those great presets.