All language subtitles for 1. Early years, musical training, live performance, demo process_EN

Hi, I'm
Jeff Bhasker.

Welcome to my studio in the
lovely Hollywood Hills of California.

Today, we're going to talk about
the amazing record "Uptown Funk."

Let's do it.

You are tuned in to
Mix With The Masters.

We're going to kind of walk
through some of the story

of creating the records, writing
the songs, and a lot of the story

that went along with
the making of those records.

And I thought I'd start a little
by talking about my journey

of becoming a producer, which started
in New Mexico where I grew up,

and started at the piano,
at the musical score

because I started as a jazz
pianist and composer.

That also kind of informed a lot
of my production style in thinking

about the arrangement,
primarily in a...

maybe a little more
of an old school sense.

While, although today we do think of
the arrangement when we take loops

and samples and things, it's not too
dissimilar, but I think sometimes

that gets a little lost, that we are
combining elements that make up

a sonic field and that play different
roles in a composition or a record.

In New Mexico, there wasn't a lot
to do there, so I spent a lot of time

at the piano and kind of
dreaming and being inspired

by modernists like Miles Davis
and Duke Ellington and Igor Stravinsky.

And I thought,
"Gosh, after growing up

in a family of Indian doctors,
how could I make a career in music?"

And I thought, "Maybe I could be
a session player in Los Angeles one day."

I had a book called...
It was about becoming...

It was like "The Complete Pianist"
or something like that,

and it had these interviews
with all of these pianists at the end.

Herbie Hancock.

Chick Corea.

Jan Hammer.

All these legends that
I grew up kind of idolizing.

So, it's another seed that kind of led
then to going to Berkeley College

of Music
to study jazz.

And then the advent of digital
recording and sequencing kind of

bled into becoming a producer and
recording music rather than composing,

arranging and forming
groups to play it.

Recording it kind of was a little bit
more exciting and immediate.

And then I could also do it myself
because I kind of picked up

learning how to play
various instruments in school band,

that was a big part of my musical
training, was playing in school band.

Even before high school,
starting in elementary school,

I started playing clarinet
in marching band.

Then in high school,
I played in what we called

concert band, which is
the marching band

during the sports season
and parade season.

And I played tuba,
I played baritone horn,

I played saxophone,
I played quad toms.

Because I was kind of a natural,
I like to learn by ear,

so my teacher would always say, "Okay,
you're going to learn this this year.

You're going to learn this this year."

But every day, for four years,
playing an instrument,

even in this kind of fairly mid-level
training, was a really great training

to familiarize myself with scores,
composition, rehearsing,

and preparation, which became another
big part of my practice.

You know, I actually started working
with Kanye West as his keyboardist

and then became
his music director.

And then that also became really
useful and a practice

that he kind of enforced
to think of the live performance

when you're making the record, which
is really, really useful as an artist,

for an artist or as a producer
to think about that, how the record

is going to serve the artist
in their live performance, because

live performance is one of the most
lucrative parts of an artist's career.

And also, if you maybe to be
a purist or philosophical about it,

that's the essential, and really,
it's the moment when the audience

and the artist come together, which is
the purest form of experiencing music.

So, thinking about how
the record will translate live

was a really important
part in both of these pieces.

My journey of producing, as I mentioned,
when I became Kanye's music director,

there was a period when
we did a lot of records,

and were touring at the same time,
so it was a really exciting time

to be able to test things out,
which is also, I think,

an awesome part
of EDM and DJ music

that they can kind of try things out
on an audience constantly,

and that there's a really,
really strong bond

between the audience
and the performer.

I think that's one element that
maybe people can knock DJs

for not being musicians and pressing
a button to trigger the music.

But they do perform for
an audience and have to create

an atmosphere
and a mood.

That's a really important part of creating
recorded music to create an atmosphere

and an experience that can
translate to a lot of different settings.

So, maybe with that in mind,
we'll go into "Uptown Funk."

Which is a record on Mark Ronson's
"Uptown Special" featuring Bruno Mars,

produced by Mark,
Bruno, and myself.

Bruno is a really special musician
who I actually met in Los Angeles

kind of early on
in both our careers.

He was, I think 17 years old,
fresh off the plane from Hawaii.

Before I worked with Kanye,
I actually had a pretty big placement

as a producer on the rapper,
The Game's first album,

which was
a huge album.

Produced by Dr. Dre,
Timbaland, Kanye, Just Blaze.

And Jeff Bhasker.
Who the hell is that?

So, I had that kind of breakthrough
after I first moved to LA

from New York where
I was struggling mightily.

But for some reason in LA,
that was the first track I made

and the first
track I placed.

Things just seemed to
kind of click for me in LA,

and that's something that
can happen often.

It's like, you'll struggle a lot
and hone your craft

and go through some changes,
and then boom, all of a sudden

things can happen
pretty quickly.

And then nothing
can happen at all.

So, after The Game album dropped,
I thought maybe it'd be off to the races.

In that case, I had moved to LA
with a focus of really working

on my songwriting because I'd been
producing a lot, but I really wanted

to dive more into creating the song
that I was producing.

Because I was producing
a lot of artists and songwriters

that had songs, so I thought, "I like
to sing, and I could make the records,"

so I thought I'd get more
into songwriting.

And Bruno had been signed
by a pair of music executives,

Steve Lindsey
and Mike Lynn.

Mike Lynn who was involved with buying
the track for The Game album.

And they
signed Bruno.

And so they said,
"Hey, you should meet this guy.

Get together with him
and work with him."

So, about two years,
we worked on learning how to write songs

and were kind of coached
and critiqued by Steve Lindsey,

who's an amazing executive
and a musician in his own right,

and has an amazing kind of bag of
guidelines, rules, tricks of the trade

on how to
write hit songs.

So, we would write songs
and Steve would critique them.

And then that's when I got the Kanye
gig and went on tour with Kanye,

and Bruno said,
"What am I going to do?"

And I said, "Just keep
doing what you're doing."

We actually had a cover band
at the time with him and his brother

who still plays in his band
and was a police officer at the time.

So, I went on with Kanye,
and then a couple years into that,

I was driving to the studio
one day and I heard,

♪ "Beautiful girls,
all over the world." ♪

And I said, "Oh, my God,
that's Bruno."

This is a
hit song.

He's going
to blow up.

And he did.

Then I worked a little bit on his first
album, but then for his second album

he said, "I got this master
plan, I want it for my second album.

I want it to be produced
by you and Mark Ronson.

And I said,
"Wow, that sounds great."

Because I was a huge fan
of Mark Ronson and I'd listened

to his Amy Winehouse
records and be like,

"God, how did he
get that snare sound?"

And try to emulate it
and try to figure it out, and...

I just thought
he was such an...

Sonically and using live instruments,
he was so meticulous

and got an amazing pop
sound out of live instruments,

which isn't really easy to do
coming from a jazz background.

I always loved trying to record live
instruments, but I kind of gravitated

towards using more drum machines
and samples, for the drums particularly

because sonically, it was very difficult
to get a really great drum sound.

Mark's records always had
an amazing punch, sonic groove,

which had a lot to do with
the drummer himself, Homer Steinweiss,

and the collective, the Daptones
that Mark teamed up with

to do the
Amy Winehouse records.

We did Bruno's second album,
and I got to meet Mark,

who I was a big fan of,
and turned out he was a big fan of mine.

And after that record,
Mark asked me to produce his album

with him called
"Uptown Special."

It's an amazing album.
It had this whole narrative.

We brought this writer,
Michael Chabon, in.

Stevie Wonder's on the album playing
harmonica to some melody that I wrote.

I'm like, "Bucket list
can die now."

But of course, we wanted to get in
with Bruno and do a record with him,

so we went to his little studio
in Hollywood that he had,

which is a really, really modest,
(crappy) studio.

But he had a drum kit
set up there, and we said,

"Okay, what are
we going to do?"

It just kind of started as a jam,
and kind of Bruno sat down

at the drum kit and just
started playing this.

This actually got re-recorded later,
but that's actually

Bruno playing
the drums.

But he started playing that,
and then I think I started playing

something like this
along with it.

All right, more
like this maybe.

And Mark's
playing along.

So, that's kind of
basic jam like this.

I know we
had this, too.

So, we kind of basically
had that, and we were like,

"This feels good.
This feels good."

It wasn't as polished as that either,
but Mark had that for like a month,

played it for people at the
label, I think radio people,

all kinds of people,
and they were just like,

"This is a hit.
This is a hit song."

And I'm like, "Okay.
Feels good."

I wasn't sure if it was a hit song,
but that's how the record started.

Over the course of a year,
pretty much, we kind of figured out

basically how to deliver
on that feeling all the way

through the record, because
the problem was, we got to the chorus

and we tried a few choruses,
Bruno was touring on the road.

We tried a few choruses,
which I don't think I have any of in here,

but none of which
seemed to stack up to.

♪ "This shit,
that ice cold." ♪

So, the real problem was figuring out
how to take it somewhere

because for me at least, you need us,
you want to come out the gate strong,

but the chorus should really deliver
you to a new level and a new place.

We're having
trouble getting there.

Also along the way, Bruno decided that
we needed something like this.

Which is a huge
hook in the song.

So, I think they recorded that
on tour and sent it to us.

So, basically, this record started
getting pieced together,

ideas flying back and forth, which
is pretty commonplace now, but this is...

When is this
record made?

It's at least six
or seven years ago.

So, pre-pandemic.

We're sharing a lot of ideas
and trying to figure out how to make this

record bulletproof, which is kind of
something I think both Bruno and Mark

and myself always
tried to enforce.

I think you'll listen
to all of our records.

Most hit records and most great
producers, you want to get to a place

where this record really
doesn't have any flaws

and never falls apart,
always keeps you interested.

So, as you go in the song,
things are coming into your ear

and introduce
the information.

Basically,
one element.

Two elements.

Beat
is strong.

Also, at the time, funk music
was not a thing.

That was not a cool
thing to be doing.

So, there's a little bit different
territory, which is good.

Also, at that time,
it's maybe a little bit lost now,

although maybe not lost,
but there's so much music now,

which is really exciting,
but it's hard to kind of

find something
that defines an era.

Maybe this is one of these songs
that kind of defines a moment

as something that
everyone was into.

So, that's kind of an interesting
choice to kind of ponder

how daring or brave
you want to go.

Then maybe Kendrick Lamar
is an artist who might say,

I'm actually going to have really
different sonic palette around this.

So, at the time, it's interesting to
go back to this and think about

how kind of different these sounds
were for a pop record.

Another interesting part,
"Girls sing your Hallelujah."

The live element.

Guess what happens at the show
when you'd say this part?

Always get to tell
the audience what to do.

And then there, then we kept
having different hooks like, funky,

funky is
a funk time.

We were like
"What are we going to do?"

What we ended up deciding on
was to bring back a really kind of

standard thing that used to be in
the past, is have a dance.

The hook is actually a dance where
everyone dances, which is an amazing thing

to be able to pull
off on a record

where everyone just
dances at this part.

They know
that's their part.