Steve Brickman Interview

0:00 Steve Brickman Music appreciation

0:11 Luke F. Walton What's up everybody welcome to music appreciation 101 I am joined by very special guest Steve Brickman. Steve what's up, man? Thank you for coming on

0:20 Steve Brickman What's up, man? Thanks for having me. I'm so excited to be here. This is awesome.

0:24 Luke F. Walton I'm so excited to talk to you about music because you take the multi instrumentalist thing to a totally new level like some people they like dabble They do a little bit of this a little bit of that Rarely, do you see somebody that's not just a jack-of-all-trades, but it's like

0:39 Luke F. Walton but is like a master of many and that's what i consider you to be just watching your videos watching what you're playing incredible saxophonist keyboardist pianist guitarist composer vocalist like in awe of you man really really excited to chat

0:55 Steve Brickman Thanks, man. Appreciate all those kind words. I'm just trying. That's all I'm doing.

0:58 Luke F. Walton same man that's all we can do but if you try hard enough for long enough you end up getting decent at these things

1:05 Steve Brickman That's true. You're not wrong about that.

1:07 Luke F. Walton so i was reading your bio but just to fill everybody in a little bit on kind of your journey um how you came up i was seeing you kind of started with with piano and then went over to saxophone is that kind of how the progression went

1:20 Steve Brickman Yeah. So I, my mom's a piano teacher. Sure.

1:23 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

1:23 Steve Brickman Um, so there's always just kind of kind of been music in our house. And then I started on

1:29 Steve Brickman classical piano in second grade i took one lesson with my mom and then i said i think i need a a real deal she's a real teacher but like you know more focused teacher so then i ended up taking um lessons with this very straight but amazing russian woman so

1:45 Luke F. Walton Sweet.

1:45 Steve Brickman like you know she had the accent and she's you know i'd be like play thing and my mom thought it sounded good and she would ask me what did you think and i said it was pretty good she's like

1:55 Luke F. Walton Like I did not like it we must do it again

1:58 Steve Brickman but it was great because it gave me like a great foundation of technique for playing and just kind of practice regimen and a little bit of structure so yeah so piano in second grade played violin for a year in third grade and then dropped it and picked up clarinet and saxophone in fourth grade and that's kind of where it all started

2:19 Luke F. Walton were you drawn to saxophone like as a kid was there something There's something about it that took you over to that instrument.

2:25 Steve Brickman I was it's funny. I think there's a picture of me when I'm like four with

2:29 Luke F. Walton Mm hmm.

2:30 Steve Brickman a little toy saxophone and i just took it everywhere so i think i just always wanted to play that instrument for some reason

2:35 Luke F. Walton That's great.

2:36 Steve Brickman yeah

2:36 Luke F. Walton It's like a magnet.

2:36 Steve Brickman exactly

2:37 Luke F. Walton I love it.

2:37 Steve Brickman yeah definitely

2:38 Luke F. Walton Talking about practice regimen, I think that's a really interesting thing to talk about for multi instrumentalists, because that's like one of the things you can bring from instrument to instrument. How did you like structure that and how has that evolved kind of over the years, the way that you approach just practice?

2:54 Steve Brickman so for me in terms of my instruments I feel like saxophone and piano are 50-50 because I started them around the same time and always kind of kept them up.

3:03 Steve Brickman Like in high school, I'd be still taking classical piano lessons and then started to take jazz lessons. But at the same time, I was playing a lot of jazz saxophone in ensembles. And, you know, I would go to NEC on Saturdays. They had like a little college prep program for high school students. So I was kind of dipping my toes in there. So.

3:22 Steve Brickman pretty much they've been 50 50 and then along the way i've picked up other instruments like

3:27 Steve Brickman flute and clarinet i really focused on in college because we had to for the school and then um guitar i picked up later in life because i sold an organ and then they wanted to sell me a 70s strat so i was like all right let me try a guitar because i've always wanted to play and then bass is kind of an extension of that but in terms of practicing um i feel like it was very important starting out to have a good foundation um you know learn the technique of the instrument really practice

3:55 Steve Brickman uh the fundamentals of it whatever it is whether it's piano or sax so for piano it was you know really helpful um i had to practice scales um two octaves both hands every day every morning um you know there'd be a couple major minor diminished um dominant major seven or yeah it was just major scales but all

4:19 Luke F. Walton Mm

4:19 Steve Brickman that kind

4:19 Luke F. Walton -hmm.

4:20 Steve Brickman of stuff and really learning the correct fingering that's super helpful if you're starting out in piano just to have those foundations of the correct fingering because then later on once you start doing your own thing and improvising

4:36 Steve Brickman it's second nature of where your hands want to go and whereas vice versa if you just hop into it which is great as well but if you don't have that foundation of fingering you'll you're more easy it's easier to get tripped up on trying to play something and then you run out of fingers to do

4:54 Luke F. Walton Yeah.

4:55 Steve Brickman it because with fingerings it helps you kind of you know uh glide because you can sneak your thumb in and then it keeps things going so that's helpful for piano and saxophone i think long tones or any sort of brass or woodwind instrument playing

5:09 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

5:10 Steve Brickman long tones really getting your tone because i think that's the most important thing in terms of a wind instrument is your sound it's like your voice but through the instrument so really practicing long tones and the technique of the instrument and scales

5:24 Steve Brickman but yeah tone tone is the most important tone and feel I think for wind instrument and then just the fundamentals of the piano which you know there's so much resources out there for that kind of stuff

5:35 Luke F. Walton Oh, for sure. I think that's one of the interesting things like when you're coming up approaching an instrument that sometimes differentiates people that are successful and aren't are those that are able to like distill like, okay, these are the fundamentals that I have to figure out.

5:49 Steve Brickman like because there's an there's an infinite amount of options that you can go especially when you're starting out like what do i start with what do i practice harder than others and i think what you're getting to is that essential point i feel the same thing with like guitar like one of the most crucial things because i didn't know how to play guitar solos or whatever that my teacher taught me was like how to do different articulations for the same note and like how to match pitches with bends and like these little things that you don't really think about practicing but

6:15 Steve Brickman Once you start incorporating them into a real regimen, it unlocks improvisation and unlocks your ability to just flow.

6:22 Steve Brickman Oh, totally. And if you look at all the masters of any craft like Picasso and Dali and Philip Glass and all these guys, you know, they studied the traditional technique of their craft and then they eventually branched out to do their own thing.

6:38 Steve Brickman and i mean it's it's obviously more fun to just i just want to jam and hop into it i don't want to like sit down and practice but i think it's so important especially when you're starting out and there's ways to make it fun i know there's these guys called like the piano guys who um have a more fun way of practicing piano or you can like make a game out of it you know try and practice scales you know with a metronome and if you're able to do it like

7:07 Steve Brickman you know um i don't know you have some sort of prize for yourself just Yeah, trying to make

7:11 Steve Brickman absolutely. it fun or or even you know um working with a friend of yours if you're thinking about starting piano or guitar and your buddy's also thinking about like let's do it together and then it becomes a camaraderie kind of thing so it's not so isolating

7:23 Steve Brickman And I like the idea too of like mixing like you can have the same technique that you're going for like running scales but like you know play the different subdivisions different tempos different feels like different gaps between the notes so it's not just like 16th note up and down doing the same thing over and over again it's like play these things as you would musically

7:45 Steve Brickman totally you could even buy a cheap drum machine and Yeah, have that be exactly. your metronome but then it's like a little fun jam session you're having yeah

7:51 Steve Brickman Exactly. I love that. I love that. And like, I like the whole thing, like some teachers had me do like improvisation where it's like, okay, we're gonna run the scale bunch, we're gonna get that but like, we're gonna jump into improvisation pretty quickly in terms of just like getting to know the scale musically and then go back to running it again, you know, kind of that that give and take between making things.

8:11 Steve Brickman musical than making things fundamental and being fluid between the two right Totally. Yeah, because you want to enjoy too, you know, it's not,

8:18 Steve Brickman yeah you know, we don't have to play music. So like, why not have fun while we're doing it?

8:23 Steve Brickman they call it playing for a reason yeah Yeah, exactly. i'm with you um so your your evolution on the guitar um i want to i want to hear kind of like how you develop now from like the student to the professional

8:37 Steve Brickman like the that movement to where now you you got all these different hats that you can wear where did you end up jumping to after college like what was your first gig what were the things that kind of transitioned from that amateur like shedding to taking it out on the stage

8:52 Steve Brickman Yeah, so when I hadn't played guitar until I was 20. four 425 Wow. so Really? so

8:59 Steve Brickman That's awesome. after Very cool. I graduated college I went to Miami University Miami Florida I was studying classical composition and jazz saxophone and then I moved to New York because I wanted to be a jazz saxophonist and what better

9:13 Steve Brickman Yeah, place to go than of course. New York City that's like where the best jazz musicians are so I moved there and I started doing some composing for couple video game companies um

9:25 Steve Brickman Cool. Awesome. and some iphone games as well so i was doing that i was going to the jam sessions every night um you know i made electronic music so i was kind of working on that throughout the day and that was my uh routine for a while um and then you know the money started to dry up so i needed to get a regular job so i worked on fancy ice cream truck a coffee shop um an after-school technology thing

9:51 Steve Brickman For kids which is where I met This drummer Dylan who he formed a band with and so I had a show coming up and I was like

9:59 Steve Brickman Dylan um you all play the show he's like yeah I was like great because my drummer uh dropped out he's like uh and then I was like because we they had a guitar there and I had just been messing around with it a little bit and then so I was like let's just start a band and see where it goes so we just me and him and I barely played any guitar but it was the best experience for me to play with an amazing drummer because it just forced me to get really good really quickly

10:26 Steve Brickman and you know i'm still learning because guitar is such a challenging instrument especially i mean you know from technical standpoint compared to piano because the way i see music in my mind is on a piano even when i'm playing

10:37 Steve Brickman interesting a saxophone um but yeah that so then i started picking up the guitar and then played a lot of rock gigs and that's kind of how I got into more recording I'd always been recording forever like my parents got me a little recording setup in high school um and I didn't know what I was doing but I just kind of learned and that was the best way and that kind of got me into composing my own music because I could record it and then also got me into electronic music because I had since being a keyboard player but then when I got the guitar I started to investigate rock music which I had never figured out and then I was like

11:09 Steve Brickman it's like oh how do you make a guitar amp oh Yes. like how do we get good drum sounds how do we mix it all together and then my palette of you know in terms of recorded world of my music that i wanted to make now i could have a whole new sound texture of distorted instruments and and it helped me figure out how to record acoustic instruments because that got me more into just the recording world in general um so and then yeah i was working that and then i started my own video business

11:38 Steve Brickman probably when i was 24 25 um and so that was kind of how i sustained myself um i would film music related events people shows uh music videos epks with interviews all that kind of stuff so that was great because i learned a lot and i kept i was able to buy better equipment which made

12:00 Steve Brickman Mm my -hmm. videos looked better which i could charge more and so that's kind of how i was financially supporting myself and at the same time i was always had my own musical projects playing in other people's bands um still doing stuff you know i did a couple things for showtime i had a spot on uh the super bowl like a commercial there so still doing some commercial music work but the video thing was kind of

12:23 Steve Brickman the bulk of my income and then i moved to la uh january 1st 2020 like Oh. before the pandemic so and my intention was um you know i sold all my video equipment except for my really really nice camera and a couple lenses and lights and i'm like i'm gonna keep this but i'm not gonna tell anyone i do video i'm gonna you know move to this new place i only do music i have you know some miami network people like people i know from miami that are kind of in the scene and that was my plan and then everything got shut down so you know

12:52 Steve Brickman everyone was like figuring out what do we do um and then luckily i got a call from my buddy jesse mcginty who went to miami and uh he got originally got this call for the gig the Clairo gig that i i'm doing now and he couldn't do because i think he has a daughter he didn't want to travel or you know he just was too busy because he's doing a million things and he's amazing um so they called me asked me if i wanted to do the gig uh they heard my stuff if they liked what i could do you know

13:29 Steve Brickman and then you know i told him i do all these other things and i was really excited that you know the possibility like oh i could play guitar here piano

13:36 Luke F. Walton Right.

13:37 Steve Brickman here and then when me and the musical director started talking you know it just became clear that i was like probably gonna i mean everyone's kind of doubling in some way but especially me i had this arsenal and they're like well why don't you play this like i'm playing a lot of acoustic on the set

13:51 Luke F. Walton Cool.

13:52 Steve Brickman which i didn't even you know i play acoustic but that's kind of really got my acoustic chops together um

13:57 Luke F. Walton For sure.

13:58 Steve Brickman So, yeah, that was kind of my journey. And I feel like my 20s were kind of exploring those new instruments like guitar, bass and sounds, pedals and recording and especially in a live environment. And then my 30s, I kind of had all those tools and now it's more like. um my instrument is my collection of instruments in

14:18 Luke F. Walton Yes.

14:18 Steve Brickman a sense so

14:19 Luke F. Walton It totally

14:19 Steve Brickman if people see

14:20 Luke F. Walton makes sense right

14:20 Steve Brickman me they're like you

14:21 Luke F. Walton there with you.

14:21 Steve Brickman know if you think of Jacob Collier you don't think he's a singer you think of like he does everything I can't do everything he does but you know I have a lot of tools and skills at my disposal so like I want to be able to you know use those to help other people um and and my own music too

14:38 Steve Brickman totally that's awesome that's great great story and synopsis we'll dig into a few more of those things a little bit deeper but i want to i want to pause on the concept of doubling um so just in case a listener doesn't know about that like that is a pretty common thing now in the live world where you're not just going to be the guitarist on stage you might play a little keyboard part or you might do something like that somebody like you who has a deeper richer bag you can double on everything from clarinet to

15:04 Steve Brickman acoustic guitar and that's a really powerful thing in terms of having a calling card and having a value proposition that you're offering to that band that you're going to go on the road with yeah

15:14 Steve Brickman Yeah, and you need to, I mean, especially with with budgets for music in general being lower, they need, you know, you if you're able to offer. You know, you kind of have to be able to play multiple instruments, even if you're a guitar player, bass player, drummer having some keyboard knowledge so you could play synth bass or a pad. It's kind of essential.

15:39 Steve Brickman And then also having the ability to run an Ableton session and playback is huge because you might be asked to do that. So I think it's kind of required that you're able to. play multiple instruments and have multiple skills and the more you have at your disposal the more people would want to hire you because they get more bang for their buck oh

16:04 Steve Brickman Exactly. And like, think about it from their perspective, too. One of the most expensive things that we just do in our normal lives is travel and just booking another hotel room, you know, another seat on an airplane for a flight aid, all that kind of stuff that adds

16:17 Steve Brickman yeah up so much. every every person adds up for sure Yeah, I just saw Kimbra at the music box here in San Diego. And yeah. trio um drummer who was also playing some synth bass and triggering stuff on spd um for like different percussion things and also like some horn samples and things that was on the spd and then also somebody that just had like a bunch of keyboards running the ableton session that was that was the band he's

16:44 Steve Brickman yeah yeah yeah i know the keyboard player jacob he's he actually mixed playing one of our our um which he mixed one of our albums which just shows he's also like an insanely talented audio recording engineer and mixing engineer but he's playing with kimber he's doing live sounds and he knows like the playbacks and all the ableton and the keyboards so there's just another perfect example of these guys who just have so many tools and you know that's why they're getting hired

17:11 Steve Brickman 100 and it sounded awesome and like surprise surprise because you have people that aren't just you know like i just have my lane it's like no i'm i'm aware of the music itself the audio the whole complexity and contributing to that in some way yeah

17:24 Steve Brickman Yeah, totally. it's really sick i want to talk about uh licensing a little bit more um you mentioned the super bowl stuff you mentioned doing staff composing for video games

17:35 Steve Brickman How do you approach creative briefs? So I guess actually maybe walk listeners through kind of like how the creative brief hits you, kind of what they're normally like, and then how you translate that into actually recorded music.

17:51 Steve Brickman So, so usually if you're getting into sync music, which is music for TV or film, you'll have, you know, you'll meet people and then eventually.

18:03 Steve Brickman you'll link up with someone or a company that gets these briefs so the company will you know we're doing a Doritos commercial or we're doing um you know an AT&T thing and this is what they want so the brief will usually give a reference track or a couple reference artists or reference songs so they want it to kind of sound in that world and then they'll give a bunch of um you know uh loose descriptive terms

18:30 Steve Brickman dark moody uh you know happy um feel good which could literally be anything so you know i think that mixed with uh listening to what their reference is can kind of give you a good idea so you you just kind of take

18:46 Steve Brickman question jumping in there when what do you do i'm just always curious about this when the reference and the like text don't match up at all like

18:56 Steve Brickman yeah where they're like i we want lo-fi bedroom pop and then they give you like rosalía and you're like uh how do you what do you approach

19:02 Steve Brickman mean there's no way of knowing what they want i think you're safer to veer closer to the reference track because that's probably what they have in in the like temp file yeah

19:14 Steve Brickman that's a good point so yeah they usually cut these things to a reference track sometimes if they have big

19:20 Steve Brickman sometimes yeah so i would say veer on that but then you know let's say um the reference track was like a hall and notes song but they said dark and moody which is not hall

19:30 Steve Brickman Yes. notes so you would listen to i would if i was doing it i would listen to hall notes song and like listen to what um elements make it sound like a hall note so it has you know the cheesy drum machine in there it's got like um a really clean spankies

19:49 Steve Brickman de-eyed guitar um it's got like real bass or synth bass maybe one 70s synth like a prophet um and maybe a cp70 piano or like a cheesy 80s piano

20:05 Steve Brickman and that's kind of the elements okay so those are the elements now how do i make it dark and moody well just i'll like get my moo synthesizer and make it a little dark patch and mess around that or i could even take the same orchestration that's in the song and just make it minor that can also change it um i'll just mess around with it you know just kind of adding elements staying in that world

20:31 Steve Brickman um playing around with it but yeah there's no way of knowing you think you might do something that's amazing and they listen back and they're like this is not what we want we don't like it or you think you do something that is terrible and you miss the mark and then they absolutely love it and then that's it so there's kind of no way of knowing you just i think the more you do it the better you get at just following your gut and you'll see what works and you'll see what tends to stick but at the end of the day you know

20:57 Steve Brickman it's just like actors auditioning for a role or voice actors auditioning you know they could be super talented but it's just not what they're looking for they think it you think it's what they want but then they have a different idea so yeah there's

21:08 Steve Brickman that's really a really no perfect science to it yeah good perspective really perspective for things like that are so high scale like a super bowl commercial did you have to go through a bunch of revisions was there like a long process or was it just kind of like You shot your shot and that one went in.

21:25 Steve Brickman I think normally, yes, especially the huge major budget ones. The one I did was for a pet food commercial that was actually pretty, like, not that.

21:39 Steve Brickman it wasn't like a multi-million dollar commercial i mean i don't know how much they spent but it's just something you might watch on tv in passing of pet food and the music was simple it was you know like a string quartet kind of thing and yeah it was pretty stripped down so i i worked with this guy who kind of got me the gig and um

22:02 Steve Brickman I sent him the stems and then he extended it, added one or two small elements and then that was it. So but I think if it was like a very big epic commercial,

22:14 Luke F. Walton Mm-hmm.

22:15 Steve Brickman there would definitely be a lot of cooks in the kitchen in terms of you submit it and then it would probably be a talk of, you know, 10 to 15 or.

22:26 Steve Brickman however many people and they're all inputting their ideas and then they come back with a list of so many notes just to try and dial it in so i'm sure on in that case it would be a lot of books in the kitchen oh

22:37 Luke F. Walton Have you ever had to do one with lyrics, like a sync with lyrics where this agency provides you like a sync?

22:44 Steve Brickman um i haven't done anything where the agency provides it i've definitely done a couple spots where uh

22:51 Steve Brickman especially nowadays there's more and more where they want something with vocals and lyrics but

22:55 Steve Brickman Mm you -hmm. come up with the lyrics at least that's my experience you come up with the lyrics and then you send them an acapella instrumental and full thing cool oh

23:06 Steve Brickman i've had a couple that have been i haven't planted them because they've been really hard and super cringe where the agency says like i want you to sing this and then

23:15 Steve Brickman no like i have to sing it like oh it's so bad like nothing really rhymes and it's all like yeah yeah it's terrible

23:21 Steve Brickman man and then it's a reflection of you because it's your thing but you don't want to you got the thing and then it gets in but you don't want to show people because it's like it's like just say oh i did this thing can i hear i don't think it's up yet you know maybe soon

23:33 Steve Brickman it's only in thailand uh you know it's in china they don't have the same laws so i want to talk about hitting the road with somebody like Clairo and kind of what what is that like uh tour manager is there are there additional like kind of groups like what kind of scale of of because i know that she's a she's a big artist but like what kind of scale of tour and logistics and stuff are you dealing with that's

24:03 Steve Brickman So we're probably playing or last year we were playing venues between two and 6,000 people. So,

24:14 Steve Brickman pretty rich you know, there's definitely a crew, there's a tour manager, front of house, a monitor mix person. there's guitar tech a playback tech um

24:25 Steve Brickman Nice. there's lighting people uh merch um i think that's it it So are you guys touring with buses, multiple buses?

24:41 Steve Brickman depends for the fly dates we'll do um hotels and then for the states we'll do buses and then um yeah yeah

24:51 Steve Brickman Nice. Awesome. Any tips for somebody that's like never been on a tour bus etiquette, fun adventures, things like that to let people in going graduating from van tour up to bus life.

25:05 Steve Brickman i think uh there's no way to really prepare for it you just throw yourself in the fire um don't go into it with any expectations because

25:15 Steve Brickman i'm sure every tour is different um because it's just like living in a house with you know people there is you never know who who's going to be in the house luckily this tour is amazing and we all get along so well and it's like a family so that's a great situation but i'm sure there are tours where you know it's not that situation and then you have to spend all your time in a confined space but yeah i don't think you can really plan for it you just um

25:44 Steve Brickman Just go into it with an open mind and be easygoing and, you know, just like any social situation, don't be a jerk and just be nice.

25:55 Steve Brickman Yep, totally. it's amazing how important that is and how often overlooked that is um but

26:02 Steve Brickman Oh, yeah. I mean, you play the show, which is only 10% of the time you're spent on the road. So that's, yeah.

26:08 Steve Brickman that's a great point have you had any um anything that came up on the road that was like unexpected like a pad on your saxophone stopped working or like artist wants to throw in some new tunes that you've never rehearsed or anything kind of like that

26:24 Steve Brickman at a conflict management overcoming doesn't have to just be this tour just just kind of like in general i always think that those kind of stories are informative for people

26:33 Steve Brickman Yeah, totally. I mean, you always should have a backup. and and the guys in nashville they have usually like a backup for the backup because you know and then let's say you have a backup system the one time you go to do something without the backup is probably the time that it's going to fail and then it doesn't fail any other time but i think having having backup situations is always good because you never know what's going to happen um what happened on mine i mean

27:00 Steve Brickman like my acoustic kept it's just the pickup on it kept stop stopped working throughout this tour and i think because the stand it would fit it's got the jack in the bottom and it would just get crunched every day because you're trying to fit it in there and then um

27:17 Steve Brickman it would just get all crackly and that was not a good vibe for uh we have this one song where i'm playing it's really quiet and moody and i've got this sound that really kind of cuts through and i'm playing some picky stuff and then when now it's like cutting out it's so loud with the effects in there so

27:36 Steve Brickman that was not ideal but it's not the end of the world because i can just you know i could literally hop to piano and play i think in one song um someone's instrument went out so then i played the part of piano but

27:46 Luke F. Walton Oh, cool.

27:47 Steve Brickman then the next night um they're like oh can you actually play it on acoustic which i hadn't done before but you know i just picked it up and then played it so yeah no major catastrophes i'm sure

27:59 Steve Brickman did anyone else have like there was maybe some technical things with the keyboard one show um which happens i'm sure to everyone so yeah just just knowing your setup and if things go haywire like either having a backup or knowing it well enough that um you know how to kind of get back to where you are and also to not get stressed because

28:24 Luke F. Walton Yeah, right.

28:26 Steve Brickman you can definitely get freaked out in that situation there's so much pressure but it's not going to change the situation it's just going to change how you're feeling but obviously you know if something goes haywire and it's not your fault like people are going to look to you because it's coming from your area so you know like it's stressful but i think the more you do it the more experience you get and then you know shit's going to happen so you just are able to like

28:54 Steve Brickman You know. don't take it personally if everyone's like you this is not happening to me but just in general

28:59 Luke F. Walton yeah

28:59 Steve Brickman if

29:00 Luke F. Walton for

29:00 Steve Brickman everyone something happens and you know it's not your fault but everyone's looking like giving you shit and whatever you know it's like okay i know it's my fault so it's all good it's like gonna be fine we'll go to the next show but you know i'm sure there's times where something gets fucked up and it's not your fault but you get fired and lose the gig because of it so i'm sure that happens too

29:21 Luke F. Walton sure but i i feel like that's one of the one of the things that people discount about pro musicians is that they think they don't make mistakes but really what they're good at is like hiding them or recovering from them you

29:34 Steve Brickman Totally.

29:35 Luke F. Walton know it's like

29:37 Steve Brickman some of the some of my favorite drummers and stuff they'll like put a beat somewhere weird but then turn that into part of the phrase when

29:44 Steve Brickman Mm in hmm. reality they just kind of screwed up and it's like that's bringing that same mentality like you broke a guitar string it's like do you know how to play the part well enough without that string it's

29:53 Steve Brickman Right. like if you're a pro you do you can you know how to like loosen up figure that out and just avoid that stray

29:59 Steve Brickman yeah note played on a different one that's and why you have yeah no no one's gonna know in the band usually or in the audience especially if like they're gonna know something's wrong because if you're you know freaking out and and trying to scramble it's gonna visually look like something's really wrong but if something's really wrong and you just casually just put the guitar down and you just hang out and then you just wait for the next song then

30:22 Steve Brickman literally no one's gonna know anything went wrong and it's gonna be like not that big of a deal and then yeah you don't even have to worry about it

30:30 Steve Brickman and i love i love your perspective too about just like know the songs well enough so if you have to hop onto keys or if you have to hop onto another instrument and comp like just know those changes so you can you can pull that off you

30:42 Steve Brickman yeah that's definitely an advantage for me i mean if i was the bass player the drummer and something went wrong then no it's like your amp dies like there's nothing i can do yeah

30:55 Steve Brickman making mistakes on bass is such a bad feeling the whole foundation of the house just collapses and you're just like oh god

31:03 Steve Brickman totally there's a lot of there's a lot of pressure in that seat totally yeah it's a funny seat too because a lot of people don't really notice it too much until they make a mistake like unsung heroes on the bass guitar

31:16 Luke F. Walton For sure. I want to ask you about improvisation and how being a multi-instrumentalist affects kind of your view of improvisation. Do you think that...

31:26 Steve Brickman um having saxophone articulation and understanding articulation from the perspective of like mouth and tonguing and stuff has affected the way that you view like articulating on piano or on guitar and vice versa like do you do these cross streams or do they kind of maintain like silos in your head a little bit more in terms of like i approach this instrument this way i approach that instrument that way when i'm really speaking and improvising on it

31:52 Steve Brickman I don't think I approach the piano or saxophone like their own thing because they're so ingrained in second nature. They're just kind of a part of me and I don't have to think about articulation or how I would.

32:05 Steve Brickman the melodies in my head and they just kind of come through my mouth or my fingers and it's there it's different on guitar because i'm more restricted of my technical facility of the instrument um so in that regards i kind of approach it more like a guitar player but trying to make it sing like a vocalist would um but i i wouldn't i think if i had the technical facility like i do on the other instruments for guitar i would be able to

32:34 Steve Brickman have that same mentality but guitar is more its own lane um i think bass is kind of in between uh yeah

32:43 Steve Brickman Cool. That's a good answer. I'm always curious. Something else I would love to talk to you about. I saw a sweet video that Clairo posted about the Omnichord.

32:56 Steve Brickman Oh, yes. I would like to let the listeners in on the Omnichord and the beauty of this bizarre instrument. You have one? Oh, sick.

33:03 Steve Brickman I love you, my omnipotent. All right, we're stalling. Like, You there, guys are in for a treat. This OmniChord is one of the most bizarre and charming electronic instruments around.

33:20 Steve Brickman I heard they're going to reissue it this year for Nice. their 30th anniversary or 50th anniversary.

33:27 Steve Brickman 50th anniversary of the OmniChord. Okay, Sweet. well, you got to have your Omnichord case that it came with. And your original case.

33:38 Steve Brickman Yep, original case. so this is what it looks like i put these colors so i could see in the dark what what

33:47 Steve Brickman Oh, where cool. That's a good i idea. need to play because Right. you There's know no it's

33:50 Steve Brickman LEDs. black in a dark stage so i know i stick and there's all there's three rows of buttons so it gets kind of confusing and they're all dark like how could you ever see that on a dark stage it's like gray gray and actually black on black so all right let's see we got so it's got a built-in in uh it's

34:12 Steve Brickman Oh. it's been it's been being weird but let's see if we get something nope there we go okay now how do we turn it off be the dolphin but yeah so we had the harmony chord so

34:37 Steve Brickman Okay. it started because um i was playing auto harp for this one song of hers um and uh it sounded amazing but i is my mom's auto harp from uh back in the day and she would teach this like mommy me kind of thing and she'd get the wheels on the bus go around so so i didn't want that to get lost or fucked

35:02 Steve Brickman Yeah. up or anything on tour so i'm like i i can't bring this out anymore so i was like all right what's gonna do the same thing and you know omni chord was the obviously next best option so then i was playing the omni chord on stage and then um you know uh we got her this omni chord for her birthday

35:21 Steve Brickman but we made this instructional video to kind of go along with it so that's kind of how it came to be and now i'm ready to be the omnichord uh you know the face of the omnichord so so suzuki if you're listening let's let's make it happen um they're

35:35 Steve Brickman OmniChord influencer wanted. great though they literally work on everything you know any style of music i think it can work on it's just it's great that's awesome that's awesome

35:47 Luke F. Walton well uh i want to i want to turn turn back over to you for kind of like one one last question is there anything in music like it could be niche it could be music theory harmony whatever or even just perspective is there anything that you feel like really passionate about that isn't talked about enough like in terms of just like being in the creative space accomplishing something musically is there any like certain like

36:12 Luke F. Walton pet emotion or feeling that you want to see expressed more or technique that you want to see explored more in pop music or by musicians in general.

36:24 Steve Brickman um i mean i'm always want to hear weird shit that's Yeah. always exciting to me which i feel like is getting more and more in pop music Totally.

36:35 Steve Brickman um i think people who are making music uh the way things are recorded and the production of them of an idea is goes hand in hand and i think um you know it's great to write songs and to kind of make music but if you have a certain which i think once you start producing your own stuff you you learn this naturally um but having that ability to you know if you play piano part it's not just like playing piano parts okay what piano am i going to do how am i going to record it what how can i get it to sound the way i want it to sound i think all those things play into each other um yeah

37:14 Steve Brickman I like that. Those cascading decisions and like. having that specificity, having that nuance every

37:21 Steve Brickman Totally. And yeah, and it's good, you know, we're all making our own music. So I think, you know, it's good just to throw yourself in the fire and like, you know, get as many skills as you can because, you know, we don't have not everyone has the luxury to, you know, hire all these people for every specific thing. So that's kind of how I.

37:42 Steve Brickman gained all of my skills it's like okay i want to record but i can't afford a studio so i'll have to learn to do it myself like

37:49 Steve Brickman Yeah. i want a great looking video but i can't hire you know a really expensive video company so i'm going to do it myself i'm like i now need to record guitar and bass on this song but i don't want to hire or i can't afford to hire someone so i'm going to do it myself so i think out of necessity that's how it's happened for me but there's so many great tools that people can go online to learn everything i think getting as many tools at your disposal is great

38:11 Steve Brickman And it's kind of essential in today's day and age. That's a really great perspective. I couldn't agree more. Yeah. Getting that bag, deepening that bag, figuring out.

38:21 Steve Brickman what you need in that moment and and not and i like i like the way you did it too because it's very similar to how i did it where um you approach what is your need right now and you add in that that skill set and knowing like in a later date there will be other skills that you gotta have to add but you're not trying to eat the whole elephant at once but very like methodically based on like the priority of the stuff you got to get done right now to

38:45 Steve Brickman Totally. Yeah. learn it yeah That's awesome. Well, thank you so much for hanging out with me, Steve. I really appreciate you

38:51 Steve Brickman yeah thanks for having me this has been yeah so much fun this is awesome.

38:54 Luke F. Walton Where can people find you? What do you recommend? What should they check out to learn more about Steve Brickman?

39:00 Steve Brickman yeah you just go to stevebrickman.com uh b-r-i-c-k-a-man it's got all stuff it's got my socials and you know instagram is the steve brickman but yeah that's where you go

39:10 Steve Brickman And great for up and comers, great examples of of audition tapes on there you your website is obviously you got the video production shops too but i i see why you're able to get gigs with that website it's

39:24 Steve Brickman Yep, really really love I did the website myself too. So, you know, Squarespace is a powerful tool and, you know, couldn't hire a website developer. So just learned to do it myself.

39:34 Steve Brickman it that's the that's the moral today everybody thank you for tuning in to music for change from 101 i am

39:40 Luke F. Walton I am Scoobert Doobert. You can find my stuff at scoobertdoobert.pizza.

39:45 Luke F. Walton scoobertdoobert.pizza is where you can find my music and my stuff. And thanks again to Steve and look forward to talking again someday and maybe making some music together someday.

39:54 Steve Brickman Yeah, for sure. Awesome.