Shining Star: Groovin' with Maurice White

Jun 19, 2007 3:02 AM, By Michael Molenda

This article originally appeared in the October 1997 issue of Electronic Musician.

Even though high school dances provided an opportunity to meet the opposite sex and fumble through the mysteries of romance, I hated them—and Maurice White was partly to blame for my angst. Thanks to the Earth, Wind & Fire mastermind, my backside seldom left the comforting anchor of the gymnasium wall. You see, I could never reconcile the fact that the body that worked just fine on the football field was a tragic mess at negotiating the slick funk of Earth, Wind & Fire. And, back in the 1970s, if you couldn't get down, your social life was dead. My romantic career didn't recover until my college poetry classes.

In the "party hardy" era, the music of EW&F was an essential component of every dance party, road trip, and clandestine rendezvous. Songs such as "Boogie Wonderland," "Shining Star," and "Song A Song" became party classics, and it's not hard to see why: energized by White's studio wizardry, EW&F simply produced some of the hippest, hottest, good-vibe music on the planet.

And those good vibes never stopped coming. Today, after nearly 30 years of making joyful noises, EW&F has amassed more than 50 gold and platinum albums, six Grammy Awards, four American Music Awards, and enough hits to make that cat in the weird clothes and other-worldly makeup look downright silly for ordaining himself the “King of Pop.” Even better, EW&F is not a nostalgia act whose past glories are represented by some trinket on the wall of the Hard Rock Cafe. The band recently released its 22nd album, In The Name of Love, and is on the road bringing its joyful, funky party to the people. White, however, is staying home. The band’s producer and leader retired from performing in 1994 to concentrate on forming a record label, expanding his production credits, and building a state-of-the-art studio facility.

Happily, success has graced all three endeavors. The first act White signed to his Kalimba Records was keyboardist Freddie Ravel, whose contemporary jazz album ascended to the Top 20. On the production side, White charted the top-selling jazz record of 1996 with GRP Records’ Urban Nights, and he is now working on the follow-up, Urban Nights II.

The final stage of White’s “stay at home” plan — the recording studio — should be fully operational by press time. In addition, he has housed the studio, the production company (Kalimba International), and the record company under the umbrella of Magnet Vision, a music complex based in Santa Monica, California.

Although journalists should use the term “legendary” with extreme caution, White has certainly earned the right to place that word to the left of his name. As one of the pioneer funk masters, he helped forge a vibrant musical style that still moves bodies today. But his own take on dance music wasn’t limited to fat, sweaty beats and endlessly repeating hooks. White managed to “class up” the joint by fusing the harmonic sophistication of jazz with a dead-on pop sensibility. He also incorporated ethnic and folk instruments into pop songs long before world beat became a musical fashion statement. And above all, his productions have always been thick with spirit and soul. Dedicated students of music production can learn volumes about melody, groove, and song arrangement by simply checking out White’s massive discography.

Luckily, we were able to get the incredibly busy producer and music exec to share his production concepts with EM readers. Sitting in his new studio — with equipment boxes still littering the main tracking room — the 30-year veteran spoke with all of the enthusiasm of a brand new artist. It was obvious why his music is filled with joy.

Are you primarily concerned with technology or vibe when making records?
I’m interested in both. I’m very interested in technology because that is what enables us to expand our vocabulary. We have these wonderful tools available that allow us to manipulate sound and experiment with sound. Experimentation is crucial to creativity, and now we have the opportunity to try things without hesitation. If something doesn’t fit, you can always change it. That level of control is very difficult when you have a studio full of musicians.

I guess you can’t just push a button and have everyone simultaneously “edit” their parts to suit your vision.
No, you can’t! But I do like to use technology in conjunction with live musicians. I’ll utilize both styles — the live energy and the precision of technology — to produce a complete sound. I come from an acoustic background, so I’m primarily reaching for natural sounds when I write and produce songs, but, at the same time, I look for ways to blend performance and programming.

May I assume, then, that MIDI programming and music technology are the foundations of your productions?
Oh yeah, I use a lot of machines to demo the songs. All the drum machines and sound modules are running. But when we start recording for real, I’ll bring in the musicians to cut live tracks. For example, I’ll ask the drummer to play to a click so I can combine his tracks with the machine tracks. Although the groove may be programmed on the machines, I give the drummer a lot of freedom because a brother playing drums is going to create more excitement than a drum machine. To really generate some excitement, you need to capture the feeling that’s translated from one musician to another. With a machine, there’s no spirit attached.

Are the sequences pretty much set in stone, or do you let the musicians battle it out with the machines and then choose the best parts for the final arrangements?
Well, I always keep an open mind. Sometimes when the musicians start playing with the sequences we’ll see that we have to slow down or speed up a track to make it work. And then there are things that we always have to discard — parts that we thought were going to be helpful but that only cluttered things up when mixed in with the live tracks. Of course, every once in a while, we’ll end up adding some things to augment the live performances.

But how do you determine when something is working as programmed, or when a new direction is warranted?
The song is the most important thing, and the song should always dictate what works and what doesn’t. So the first thing I try to do is create a great song. I usually start writing with just piano and voice. When I think I’ve created a good song, I’ll start working with the musical arrangement — writing, sequencing, and recording parts — and then the process will come back to the vocal. The vocals are the last thing I do.

Do you always keep the vocals in mind while you’re adding parts?
Pretty much. I’m always singing along with the tracks when I’m visualizing parts. It’s always a balancing act. For example, if the horns are saying something, the vocals are not. Likewise, if the voice is saying something, then the horns don’t say anything.

That’s an interesting point. Inexperienced producers always seem to want everything “talking” at once.
I think what happens is that it’s so easy to program certain things, that some people just want to hear every single one of their great ideas. But my thing is all about trying to craft records for the listener. I want to create something that will be appealing to people’s ears. That’s the reason I like to balance everything out. Conflicts can confuse the listener. This is why the mix is very important, too. You can certainly record parts that counteract the vocal lines — and those parts can actually help by giving the track more energy — but you need to keep them back in the mix to ensure the vocals can be clearly heard. Sometimes a little EQ tweak or a level adjustment will separate other parts from the main line you want the listener to hear. The parts are still there, but they’re perceived on a more subliminal level.

How many parts do you typically develop for a song?
Oh, I like a million tracks — just like everybody else! I lock up two 24-track machines, and I also have a lot of virtual tracks going.

How do you decide which parts stay, which parts go, and which parts are placed subliminally? Do you employ any conceptual methodologies to ensure that all the material you record actually works?
No. To be honest with you, I kind of leave those decisions to my engineer. I want to be totally free to create in the studio. I like to be able to grab things out of the air. I put so much stuff on tracks, man, because I never know when I’m going to need a part.

It’s important to have options in case I change an arrangement or something and, because of that change, a part doesn’t work anymore. With all these “back up” parts recorded, I can usually find something else that works. But for the most part, I let the engineer make the initial editing decisions.

So you’re still constructing some aspects of the song arrangement at the mixing stage?
Yeah. I move stuff around a lot. I’m always flying stuff from one place to the next. Sometimes we use a sampler and sometimes we use [Digidesign] Pro Tools. We actually use Pro Tools a lot, but not as a multitrack recorder; we use it to comp tracks.