Scott Henderson Discussion

[dizzy]

Hey Scott

I'm listening to your version of Chelsea Bridge.
Beautiful playing.
I have some questions:

1. I know you are using Bruce Forman's red archtop with a single coil.
What amp are you running it through? Are you using a clean boost or a compressor?

2. Did you put on lighter strings then Bruce uses?

3. On the head did you work out the arrangement completely or are you improvising some some of the "counterpoint"? It sounds free in a nice way.

4. It sounds like you are using your right hand fingers on lots of the chords. You get a balanced sound and I know you use flesh and not nails. Any tips on developing this balanced sound between each note of the chords? When I strike chords with flesh it can sound muddy but when using nails it can sound
harsh.

Thanks Scott

[Scott Henderson]

It's just the guitar through my Bandmaster - no pedals. It has big strings, but it's really easy to play. I couldn't do bends like on a strat, but the action was low and very comfortable to play.

I wish I could say the head is improvised, but it's totally worked out. I was improvising the head more on gigs, but for the album I took the best ideas I had on the road and came up with that arrangement.

The finger style thing is a pain in the ass, especially when playing with a totally clean sound, which I'm not used to. Notes in a chord often come out louder or softer than others. Alan put a compressor plug-in on the track, but very light. I love Bill Frisell's playing, but sometimes he's using a compressor and I can't stand the way it sounds because it's very obvious compression - if it wasn't, it wouldn't function like he wants it to. Normally I'm playing through a boost pedal which has light compression, but also light distortion, and that seems to even things out enough. The chords on Chelsea Bridge sound balanced because I punched in and fixed the ones that sucked.

[dizzy]

Thanks Scott
It sure is a beautiful version of the tune.