Practicing

Wgg: Scott, you said that you hardly ever have time to practice anymore...

Scott: Well, I could have time to practice if I was that serious about practicing but I guess when it comes to to the point where you have to come up with music for a record - man, it's such hard work. It's such time consuming work for me.

I'm not the kind of player to jot something down on a napkin and say, "Let's go in a studio - here's my record." For me, I don't know why I have this thing that makes me say, "Each tune has to really be different, each tune has to be special."

Wgg: You like to have the structure worked out in advance?

Scott: No, it's not really about the structure. It's more about just coming up with a concept for a song and coming up with a song that doesn't sound like a million other songs out there and trying to come up with something different.

Maybe it's because I'm not that talented but it seems like for every 10 hours I spend I'm lucky if I get 15 minutes of music out of it.

Composition

Wgg: How do you go about writing a new tune? Do you have some preferred way, some sort of method?

Scott: First of all I like to write in real time because you hear the music in real time. Sometimes it is more natural if you write it in real time which is either singing to something or playing to something. So usually I have a drum groove first and I listen to it in my car for a long time until I start to just develop ideas, rhythmic ideas and I sit at home and jam to it and come up with stuff. Then it's just a matter of cutting and pasting.

You know I might play all day and only get one decent idea but at least that's one thing and if I get another idea the next day I can paste that to it and sooner or later I'll have like a large vocabulary of ideas for that one groove and then I start piecing it together.

It takes a long time for me because like I say - some people are naturally talented, I'm not.

I've seen Joe compose, Joe Zawinul and he sits there at the keyboard and starts playing and there you have "Birdland."

It's done. You know what I mean?

He's playing compositions just right out of the top of his head. He's probably the best at it but in general keyboard players have a better time of doing it because they can comp in their left hand and play melodies in the right hand. They can easier come up with music than guitar players can.

For guitar players, it's harder for us to facilitate chords, rhythm and melodies at the same time over a groove, so it takes us longer to piece something together, or at least for me.

I have a lot of cool harmony in my head but I don't necessarily have it "at the tip of my tongue" ready to come out.

Process of elimination

Like I said I'm not really that talented, I don't hear everything. I have to use process of elimination, maybe most composers do. Where you try this (grips a chord airguitar style) and go "No," try this - "No," try this - "No." Finally you hop on something and go, "Yeah, I like that."

But it might take you a long time to get there.

That's timeconsuming and that's what consumes my time when I have to deal with music and for me sitting there just practicing "Giant Steps" would be kind of a luxury. If I never had to do another record that's probably what I would do. I would sit there and practice standards all day and transcribe other Jazz players and build up my vocabulary which I still do some.

Right now I don't have any new tunes so when I get home probably what I'm gonna be doing for the next year is, every available minute I get I'll be sitting there trying to come up with some decent music to play.

I don't know when I go see bands that's still to me the most important thing. The strength of the music. It seems to overshadow sometimes the strength of the players.

I've many times gone to see concerts where there were good players and if the tunes weren't that good it didn't impress me as much as when I went, "Wow, that music they were playing is really great." Like when you go and see a Jeff Beck concert or go see a Weather Report concert. The music is so strong, the tunes themselves so strong.

That's important.