Scott Henderson Discussion

[Chickentonight]

Hi!

Just would like to ask how do you feel about your creativity nowadays compared to your younger days? Lots of composers kind of stagnate little by little. You have certainly had great quality forever, but do you feel it gets more and more harder to come up with new stuff?

Generally speaking, Is it more that you have done already so much, have less time due to family life or just that you get more critical to your stuff as you age that people tend to slow down music release process?

As a bonus question, how do you feel about million selling people and bands who make records which sound horrible compared to their earlier stuff? Are they getting def or what's the problem with the devaluation of production standards? And why make automixed stuff which makes everything sound the same? (I'm thinking about metal bands here mostly). Isn't unique album production also key part of the art of music?

Sorry for bad english (and I don't mean the band).

[Scott Henderson]

I find it harder to come up with fresh sounding material after writing over 100 songs. Every composer is a bit fearful of writing the same tune over and over, but it helps to approach the composition process differently every time, for example starting with a melody, a chord progression, a groove, an effect, banging on pots and pans - whatever works.

I've never been very fast at releasing records - writing an album's worth of music takes a long time. It was faster in Tribal Tech because we had more than one writer. I also like to play the new music on a few tours before recording since the music grows and becomes more organic.

I can't think of anyone who's putting out worse records than they used to - I'm sure it happens but I don't follow rock bands much. My favorite bands broke up and stopped recording. I don't know what "automixed" means, but the production is definitely an important part of the music. Producing is like guitar playing - no matter how good you get at it, there's always room for improvement.

[Chickentonight]

Thanks for answering. I meant by automixing that the same exact settings are always used for different instruments in the mix resulting in the exact same sound. Before it was impossible with analog gear, but it seems to be the norm nowadays.

Metallica you probably now, that's a good example about producing going bad. Their earlier stuff had much better production, and maybe even more importantly, you could say what album is playing just by hearing a few seconds of it. Each album had it's own signature sound. I miss that a lot. Now if you don't have the standard industry sound you are instantly ignored for sounding bad. More in the rock genre of course this, but probably in some level in others too.

[Chickentonight]

Not very good idea to talk about metallica to a jazz legend.. my mistake heh.

I'd like add that, you are one of the very few artists that genuinely are very careful at avoiding repeating what has been alreaydy done. Most just don't seem to care and make the same songs over and over again. And that's kind of sad.

[Gonza]

Ha! don't talk about Metallica to a Jazz legend man!

Scott probably knows it though, I heard you talk about Tool in guitarwank and meshuggah so it's probably not about not talking "metal" to a jazz guy but maybe just the right kind of.

I know what you mean about the production, I think you might also be confusing old technology with sound identity, I mean ofcourse there is always a search for good sound among professionals cause that is part of taking your music seriously, but some albums just sound original cause they sound bad, the first two Metallica albums are a good example I think. I love them, and probably they do too, or at least at the time they did, but they don't sound at it's best. Of course they did not record it with the best equipment at the time too, specially for Metal.

About creativity I think it involves learning a lot first, when you incorporate new stuff you also get out new stuff, that's the beauty of it. Also I think, and Scott is the best example of this, when you try different solutions to the same problem, the next solution is going to be more creative than the last, cause is not where you went first, but you took your time to come up with different ways it could go.

Alright I talked too much.

[Chickentonight]

Hi. Thanks for input.

I meant mostly puppets, justice, black and load albums. Each had a very different easily recognizable production style. All great in their own way. Now we don't have that anymore. Only the same over mixed bass drums and over compressed non dynamic harshness. It isn't about the money (at least in metallica's case) so maybe it is about developing def ears? Don't know.