Scott Henderson Discussion

[dizzy]

Hey Scott
Lately I have been working on incorporating long fast lines into my improvising.
That is one of the things that I admire about your playing. You can keep long lines going and they stay interesting. I have figured out a few of your lines off albums but you are able to just keep weaving interesting lines together phrase after phrase solo after solo.(you play other interesting stuff so it is not just this one aspect of your playing that I enjoy)
I was wondering if this was an aspect of your playing that you consciously worked on or did it naturally arise from transcribing Coltrain and other players? Maybe my brain just is not naturally wired to play this way and I should accept that I am not a player who plays like this.
So could you talk generally about this without getting into specific concepts etc. I know you don't want to give free Internet guitar lessons.

Thanks Scott.

[Scott Henderson]

Just look at it like a language. We learn thousands of words, and even though we use a lot of the same ones, we re-organize them to form new sentences. When I learn ideas, they're always short - never more than 8 notes. I practice the hell out of that idea for at least a week or two, forcing it into my playing by playing seamlessly into it and out of it, joining it to other ideas. I play it with different rhythms, and in different modes. For example if I learned it as a dorian idea, I use it as a phrygian or lydian idea. Basically, what starts off as "learning a new lick" becomes adding a creative concept to your playing. If you're playing it verbatim like you learned it, you didn't really learn it.

After you've spent years doing this, it becomes much easier to make up your own ideas as well as mutate the ones you've learned, and to join those ideas together to form phrases (our equivalent of sentences). If you learn one idea a week, 52 a year, that's building your vocabulary pretty fast. The speed thing just comes from starting slow and gradually upping the tempo. Playing fast isn't really my forte but I'm able to hang in there (usually).

[dizzy]

Thanks Scott. That makes allot of sense. I've heard you say that before but I think I finally truly get it because that is how the stuff I currently play got in my playing. I just have to do what I did more.

[bigscottfan]

Mike Stern said once in an interview that "to play fast, you have to hear fast".
Personally, if referring to improvisation, could not agree more.