Scott Henderson Discussion

Matt · Joined: 28 Oct 2015 Posts: 27 Location: London

Hi Scott

I'm writing about the brilliant live version of 'Worlds Waiting' (below). Was your long solo guitar prelude always totally improvised when you played the tune? I think I know the answer but I ask because the amazing intro to this seems like its own complete little composition, very different to the recorded version. I put it up there with Keith Jarrett's great opening to 'Stella By Starlight' on the 'Standards Live' record which I'm sure you know.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJzXeVVii8U

Cheers for the brilliant music,

Matt

Scott Henderson · The Man Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 2125

Thanks Matt, I was just improvising and it was different every night, but I had a similar intro to Jakarta on my Live album - it started out by improvising, but over time it morphed into a mini-composition which was almost the same every night.

There are always "better than we really are" moments which happen when we improvise, and it's tempting to learn them and repeat them nightly - the up side is a more consistently good show, but the down side is the gig starts to feel over thought out and preconceived.

Even when playing written parts, I try to improvise as much as possible and play things a bit differently every night, otherwise I get the feeling that the other guys in the band want to kill me.