Brian Culbertson’s new album, XII, will be released on July 20. With his busy schedule of tour prep and life, Brian was very gracious in giving us some one-on-one time as well as all the inside details and secrets about his new album and upcoming tour. This is part one of a two part interview where we got the chance to talk with Brian about everything from recording the new album, to songwriting and collaborating, to touring. Check out our previous post, Brian Culbertson XII, to get more background on the new album.
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When we got the chance to sit down with Brian we didn’t want to waste anytime. So with the pleasantries out of the way, we jumped right in to talk about his songwriting and collaborating process. This first part of the interview will be a transcription of the interview. The second part will feature parts of the interview in audio form and some music lessons from Brian, so stay tuned.
Though it’s not an absolute formula, can you walk us through a little of the songwriting process?
Yeah, I would say a majority of the time I will always start with a groove, a drumbeat. I’ll have a general idea in my head if I want to do an up-tempo funky thing, a medium groove, or a ballad type of thing. So between those three I’ll get a groove together that I’m liking. I’ll go through a million different sounds, drum sounds. Kick drum first, snare drum, then hihat, then I’ll just start layering different drum sounds and percussion things until I get a groove that I really like.
And then once I get that, I either find a bass sound or some sort of chord type sound like a Rhodes or a piano or whatever and start figuring out what’s going to go on top of this groove. Then I’ll get an eight bar thing together and then maybe do the next section like a verse, a B, and a chorus section.
Believe it or not, I’ll sort of produce out a whole track without even writing the melody. Once I get the track really feeling great to me then I’ll start writing the melody with my piano sound over the top of everything that’s already there. To me, that way the melody really fits nicely with the groove and the melody just grooves along with the whole track.
That’s how I do it. And I know a lot of other people will do it completely opposite. They’ll have a melody floating in their head and have to figure out, “Okay, what goes with this?” I’ve never done that.
So normally you’re doing the chords first?
Groove first then chords, then believe it or not, I’ll actually do all the extra little parts. Like I’ll put down a little Clavinet or a string part or all kinds of other things. That inspires me when I hear lots of different sounds going, lots of cool things. That inspires me to write a melody over the top of it. That’s how I do it the majority of the time.
Do you ever start the process on a piano?
Occasionally, I’ll sit down at an acoustic piano and just start writing. I’ll just start playing, improvising some stuff. That happens maybe 5% of the time. Those tend to be more ballad type things. There’s a song on the new record called “Forever” which was started that way. Myself and Sheldon Reynolds, who is a guitar player, we sat down in my piano room. He picked up my acoustic guitar, we just sat down and started playing together and that song came out. I like to do it occasionally because it is very different sounding, the kind of composition that happens.
When you do that, do you just go in and roll ProTools for a while? Or is it something that comes back to you?
No, I should probably. But most the time we’re just playing. Occasionally, I’ll bring one of those tiny digital recorders, like for voice recording, memos and stuff. I have one of those tiny little things that I’ll just set there on the piano. Like if we get something, “Okay, this is cool, let’s lay it in so we don’t forget it.” But I don’t just roll tape for an hour or two, I don’t do that. We’ll work on something until someone says, “Hey, this is cool. Okay.” Then we’ll lay that into the little voice recorder so we remember it, you know.
Do you write when the mood hits you, or do you set time aside to go in and write?
Most the time I have to set time aside. I’ll get into record mode. “Okay, I’m in writing mode, I have to go write now, let’s do it.” But when it gets to that point, I’m pretty much ready.
My year is interesting. It’s a mixture of touring and working on other projects. And then when it’s time for me to write for my records I’m normally really ready to get in there. I don’t do it that often, every couple of years or whatever.
If I had to do that everyday, I probably wouldn’t be as inspired. But, when I’m ready, I’m ready. I’m like, “Let’s go in, let’s do it!” I get all excited about it and start working on tracks.
Do you ever write when you’re on tour or on the road at all?
No, never liked doing that. I’ve tried. To me, I’m very focused on the show when I’m on the road. I’m always thinking about making the show better. “What can I do? What can I tell the band to do? How can we tweak the show for tonight to make it better?” My brain is just totally on the road.
Have you ever started writing a song on a different instrument other than a piano or keyboard?
I have not. Probably because other instruments that people write on are guitar, which I’m not a good guitar player at all. So, I could not write a song on guitar. I mean…what else do you write on? I guess singers just start singing, but I’m not a singer either.
So no new creations on the iPad yet?
No, not yet. It’s not quite there yet, I don’t think. They’re fun little toys on there, but I haven’t seen a program yet that I can be like, “You know what, I’m going to write a song with this.” I don’t know yet. I’m so used to my full blown Logic rig with five trillion sounds in it. I get spoiled.
Yeah, it’s a little hard to carry around.
Yeah, kinda. You know, I’ve never written a song on trombone.
That seems like it would be a rather hard one too.
Yeah, I don’t think that would work. Maybe a trombone sonata someday, or not.
You mentioned that you think about the parts of the song early on. Do you think to yourself, “Here would be a great trombone solo or horn rise?”
Yeah, I’ll start hearing the whole production in my head. And really it’s just about getting it down. So, I’d say it definitely a combination of that, me hearing things, and some of the time I’ll just sit down and think, “I know it needs something.” I might not be able to put my finger on it, but I know it needs a special something here. And so what I’ll do is just start searching through, like I said, the millions of different sounds that I have until something hits me. “Ohh, that’s cool, let’s put that in.”
I don’t think people realize how many sounds we have as music producers at our finger tips. I just start scrolling through banks, and banks, and banks, and banks, of random weird sounds. It’s sorta hard to explain unless you show someone.
Do preset sounds like those in a software plugin ever take you in a creative direction you hadn’t previously planned on going? Can you think of an example from the new album?
Yes, definitely. One of the songs on the new record is called “I Don’t Know”. That started with a sound from Omnisphere, a SpectraSonics plug-in. It’s a synth plug-in with just a billion weird, strange, odd, cool sounds. So I was just searching through there one day and came across this sound. It totally hit me in an interesting way and I just did a completely different track because of that one sound. And it turned into this whole other song that I’ve never done anything like it before.
There is a sound in there that goes, dink, dink, dink. I don’t even know what the hell you even call it? It’s sort of a mallet type sound with a delay on it. Actually in one of the video blogs I talk about that, video blog 30.
Vblog 30 was one of the earlier vblogs, was that an early song in the process?
Actually that was a song I wrote when I was just demoing. I had just upgraded Logic to a new version and I was just kind of making sure it was working correctly. Cause I had my tech’s coming over a bunch, day after day. It was originally called “Test”. Cause I was literally, “testing” the new system. And it turned into this. I thought, “Damn, this is pretty cool I should use this thing.” So you never know.
It is such a beautiful cinematic departure. I thought, Wow, how did that happen? I had to take a second take on it, start the song over. It’s a beautiful song. I noticed on the credits for that song, it says you did some vocals on there.
Yeah, later in the song. You know how Metheny would use vocals, kind of in the background real verbed out? That’s what I did. I just heard this wailing, it happens later on when the real drums and bass come in. The kind of rock thing at the end.
Which is another piece that threw me. I thought, Oh my gosh, the track couldn’t get better.
It takes it up another level doesn’t it? It’s weird. Yeah, I don’t know how I heard that. It was like, “You know what? It needs to keep going.” With orchestra, it’s over the top.
Speaking of songs and collaborations with other people. When you collaborate with other artists like Earl Klugh or Chuck Brown do you write with that specific artist in mind?
Yes. I know beforehand. We start putting lists together of people I’d love to work with. And then we start reaching out whether I know them personally or not. Obviously if you know people it’s a lot easier. But if you don’t know people, you start asking, we have management, booking agents, record labels. There’s ways of getting to everyone. It’s just a matter of how quick are they going to get back to you. Or if they are going to say yes, or no, or whatever.
But before I even start writing or collaborating we know who it’s going to be with. So we definitely know what’s up. Like the Chuck Brown thing, I knew that was going down. So I came up with the track myself at home and then sent it to him, cause he’s in DC area. He just started writing some ideas to it, and finally we got together, flew him out to LA and then we finished up the whole writing of it and recorded it out in LA. So that worked.
Same with Earl, actually Earl. The way that happened, I had nothing before. I wanted to just write fresh with a clean start. And that song I got together with Earl and Ray Parker Jr. Cause Ray and Earl, I don’t know if you know, they grew up together in Detroit when they were kids. And they’d never worked together, believe it or not, on anything. Ray’s been a good friend of mine over the past few years. We were actually at the Canadian Smooth Jazz awards about a year and a half ago. It was April of 2009, and Earl was getting a lifetime achievement award. Ray came in to give him that award and we were hanging out there. I said, “Man, Earl, obviously I’m a huge fan of yours, I would love to do something together at some point.” He was into it, and I finally started this record so I called him. I said, “I have this idea of getting together with you and Ray, the three of us in the room together, write a song from scratch, record it and see what happens.” So that’s what we did.
When writing with other people in mind does that make it harder on the song writing process or is that an easier thing to do?
When you’re in the same room collaborating it just happens naturally. I’m going to write the way I write and that person’s going to write the way they write. It’s just a matter of fitting the two together in some capacity. And most the time it just kind of naturally happens. And here and there, you’ll be like “What if we try this?” It’s definitely a collaborative thing. And hopefully everyone’s cool. No, I like to be just open and totally willing to change. Go over here and do something different that I wouldn’t have thought of.
I think that’s what’s great about collaborating because I always grow as a song writer because you get new ideas from that other person that you’re working with. It just adds to your own arsenal.
It’s pretty rare that you can put in one album and hear Chuck Brown to Earl Klugh, all in one album.
To “I Don’t Know”.
Exactly.
It’s definitely an interesting mixture of songs but somehow it all comes together. It all works, a little something for everyone in there.
Did you have a theme or concept in mind when you went into the writing process?
Yeah, I mean, it wasn’t like not so themed as like Bringing Back the Funk [Amazon MP3
Yeah, even the ballads have that feeling.
Exactly, when the drums kick in, you know it’s an R&B groove. So that was somewhat of a little theme. But I wanted to make the whole album, as a whole, very broad. But with that underlying theme still. I think that the piano holds it all together. I think that’s one thing as an artist we all strive to do, come up with an individual, unique sound at our instrument that makes us distinguishable.
Not being a singer, that’s difficult sometimes. There’s five billion sax players out there and many times it’s hard to distinguish who’s who. Unless it’s a David Sanborn or Kirk Whalum, or Dave Koz, there’s a few that you say, “Okay, that’s the guy”, but they’ve actually done it.
Stay tuned for part two, it won’t be long.
You can keep up with Brian Culbertson on his website at BrianCulbertson.com, as well as on FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube.