Scott Henderson Discussion

[Matt]

Hi Scott, I've read a bit about your preferred methods for getting the delays you like, but don't think I've ever heard about WHY you use them. Was it something you were 'hearing' in your head, or did it just come from experimentation? Or were you influenced by another player in that area?

Personally speaking, I always loved your guitar sound on 'Nomad' but was never sure exactly 'why'...until I listened on headphones.

Long-winded question but hope you get my drift... Am getting very philosophical in my old age!
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[Scott Henderson]

The first band I ever listened to was Lad Zeppelin - Jimmy page used an Echoplex occasionally and I loved that sound, then I heard Jeff Beck and he used delays even more. I suspect they both got the idea from Les Paul - I could be wrong but I think he was one of the first guys to use it.

Now even pop singers use it and it sounds very cool. Listen to Beyonce's "All the Single Ladies" and you'll hear a really good example of how it's used in that world. Peter Gabriel is also a singer who puts echo on his voice - he uses the EchoBoy plug-in, which is the same one I use (and many other guitar players). As I've said many times, it's the best echo you can buy and it's only around 100 bucks. I still have my old Echoplex and use it sometimes, just to be old school.

To answer your question in a technical way, reverb is more transparent than delay so if there's not enough, the music can sound dry (which is fine depending on the style - for example funk doesn't need much reverb), but if you want the music to sound wet, reverb can also make it sound muddy. Delay with short feedback can pull itself away from the notes faster than reverb. The effect is a cleaner wet sound with more definition, and if you're a fan of delay like I am, you like hearing those little echo trails in the background.

You can leave a delay time the same for a whole song, or you can make the delay the same tempo as the song - both produce different effects. I like to make the most out of it so I program different delay times depending on how big the spaces are in the song. You can put each delay time on a separate bus so it's very easy to do - in my opinion it's the most musical way to use delay because each echo shows up in the perfect place.