Scott Henderson Discussion

[randope]

Hi Scott,
What's your general approach to delay settings when you are layering different tracks? I know that you said that different delay settings can help separate tracks, and masters like Jimmy Page use that to their advantage. Also, in my experience, using just one delay setting for everything can really screw up the "mood" of the parts when recording. Not to mention there are so many settings to tweak in a delay (Time, Level, Repeats, Tone) that it seems like there are endless combinations.

How do you approach setting your delay for different parts? Also, from listening to guys like Jimmy Page, how do you think they approach setting their delay?

Thanks!
Randy

[Scott Henderson]

Jimmy Page used different reverbs and mic placements, but delays weren't really his thing, except for pulling out the old Echoplex from time to time. Jeff Beck is the real delay master, or his producers... not sure how much Jeff is involved in that end of things. David Torn produced some of the recent records, and he's great with delays. It's pretty much a common sense thing, using different delay times to match the space after a phrase - the longer the space, the longer the delay time. It's not so much about making the guitar sound wet, because the reverb takes care of that - it's more about adding rhythmic color to the music.

When working with a DAW, you can have as many busses as you want, so I use about 5 busses, each with a different delay time. My normal delay time is around 400 to 500 ms, but if I notice a space where I'm hearing multiple repeats of that delay time, I'd rather hear just one repeat, so I set the delay time on another buss to hit right in the middle of the space. That's pretty much it - unless I'm going for more of an effect, like hearing the trail of a long delay while I'm continuing to play new phrases. Chick Corea's engineer did that on live gigs when Chick was playing single line synth solos with no comping - sometime the delay was really long, as much as two seconds. I've also heard this on Jeff's records, and even Beyonce's producers will put a long delay on her voice which you can still hear while she's singing the next phrase.

A few more delay tricks - SRV often put dry guitar on one side, and a 20 ms 100% wet delay on the other. It's a very wide stereo sound which can be cool sometimes. Easy to do in a DAW by just copying the track into a new track and shifting it back 20 ms, then panning the two tracks hard left and right. Holdsworth's delay formula was dry guitar in the middle, a 30 ms delay on one side and a 60 ms delay on the other - the delay tracks are brought into the mix just enough to hear them and make the guitar sound stereo. Allan showed me this trick and I used it on some Tribal Tech records. These days I'm more a fan of mono guitar - I usually pan the guitar a little to one side and pan the delay a little to the other - in my opinion this gives the biggest sound.

One thing I've noticed is that the quality of the delay sound affects the overall tone. I used to use Waves Super-Tap delays until I found EchoBoy, which sounds much better and therefore makes the track sound better too.

[peter_heijnen]

Echoboy is cool!