The Piano Playah

Pianist Kiefer Shackelford combines serene melodies with programmed electronic beats.

Kiefer — 31-year-old Kiefer Shackelford — has accomplished what most musicians aim to do: he’s crafted a unique, identifiable musical sound and personality. On recordings, that sound is a combination of jazz piano and hip-hop beats. Live onstage, it typically grows into something bigger, with a drummer, bass player, and occasionally horn players.

He's collaborated with artists like Drake, Terrace Martin, and Kaytranada, and worked with Anderson.Paak on his 2019 Grammy-winning album “Ventura.” On his "Approachable Music" podcast, Shackelford interviews a range of musicians about the songwriting process, and he does loads of online musical tutorials.

At The Fillmore in San Francisco earlier this year, Kiefer opened for the funk juggernaut Lettuce with a sweeping set. His trio — which included an electric bass player and drummer — vacillated between quiet melodic passages and full-tilt jazz explosions. Lettuce keyboardist and vocalist Nigel Hall jumped on his keys and jammed with them for most of their set. 

This week, MUSIC NERD spoke with Shackelford by phone about his fifth album, “It’s OK, B U,” released this Fall on Stones Throw records, his music-writing process, his dorm room music sessions at UCLA, and why he loves the music of J Dilla.

How would you describe your sound to someone who’s never listened?

The simplest way to describe my music is beats — that boom-bap, late-90s MPC sound — with piano solos. I like jazz like Robert Glasper and I also like beat makers like J Dilla. When I started around 2014 or 2015 on Soundcloud, I was one of a few people doing it. It’s much more common now, but I had been making music like that in college a few years before.

What about J Dilla resonated with you?

What got me into J Dilla was Slum Village Fantastic Volume One. It was so interesting. At that time I had mainly listened to acoustic music, like straight ahead jazz. But then I heard Dilla. 

Those were not sounds that occur organically with acoustic instruments. It had an otherworldly sound to it. Otherworldly sounds like that can evolve otherworldly emotions. When I listened to Dilla, I felt different emotions. I saw a huge opportunity there to express different emotional aesthetics with my own music.

What does your music-writing process look like? How do songs typically start, and how do they evolve?

Sometimes I just sit at the piano and record voice memos, write little charts on paper, and listen back to the voice memo. I make modifications, then record again. I created an exercise called five bounces or 10 bounces. You listen to a song that’s 70 percent there, but need to get it to the finish line. I write down five to 10 things I want to change or edit, like “add a shaker,” or “make the bridge six bars instead of eight,” or “make an outro.” 

I record those edits in an hour or two, then drive around the block and listen to it in the car. Then I write down 5-10 more edits, and by the time I do that, I’m done. When it comes time to make an album, I have a few hundred ideas in the bank to choose from. I pick my favorite 10-15 ideas, based on what’s most dynamic, most captivating, what goes together, what’s most intriguing.

Artistic decision-making is arbitrary. There’s no divine intervention, no higher power. You are the decider, the creator. How and when you do it is your artistic style. You just make choices.

You do music tutorials online. What’s your approach?

I’m just as interested in dispelling narratives about music making as I am about making music. One problem with music education is learning things from non-musicians, who have ideas about prodigies and geniuses, and narratives about how to learn music. But when you talk to real musicians, there is this whole other set of ideas about how music really works. 

My whole life, I wanted to learn music so badly, but had it in my head that it's too complicated, only for geniuses, that you have to know this scale or utilize this diminished chord or another one. But now I’m like what was all that bullshit? That’s not how it works. If you want to do music, it's very doable, it’s not nebulous. It’s very practical, and compatible with how our brains work. I like to interrogate those ideas to help other people. Anyone can get better at music at any time. 

You studied jazz piano at UCLA. What was that experience like?

It was great. My teacher taught me anything can be learned, and to go into it with that mentality. Any aspect you want to learn, you have to isolate it, analyze it, break it down into the smallest possible piece, and do it hundreds of times. I thought I would never be a good musician. I didn’t think I could play a bebop line, but now I play them, just really slow. I didn’t believe improvising was something you could get better at by practicing, but there are drills and transcriptions to work with. 

Stress and burnout are real. There’s a balance between keeping it real and keeping it fun. You can learn to like music more. When I learned how to enjoy practicing, in my sophomore year, that’s when things started to explode. Getting better is fun. I learned how to organize. You have to believe in it, and tell yourself, this is gonna work, I know it's gonna work, and make good use of your time. Efficiency feels really good.

I started waking up in the morning saying I’m a musician, I care about music. And I practiced. When you don’t practice, it’s like going to bed without brushing your teeth. It doesn’t feel right. I started to have a plan, goals and objectives. I started to be someone who gives a shit and values my growth. But it's been an up and down process, and I’ve had years with low self esteem when I stopped practicing. 

There’s a distinct sensitivity to your music. You have song titles like “Socially Awkward” and “Dreamer,” and album titles like “Happysad.” Your album art is a bit ethereal or subdued, and so is your music. Where does that sensitivity come from?

It makes me cringe a bit, because I’m not an expert on mental health, but it's just what is happening for me. Every day I’m trying to be a little better than yesterday. My art is about being a musician itself. My albums are about being an instrumentalist in a world that may not always give a shit about instrumental music.

Your fifth album, “It’s Ok, B U,” came out this Fall on Stones Throw. What were you aiming for with this new work?

I guess I’m trying to be myself in the biggest way possible. It's the story of my life at the time, dealing with negative self-talk. It’s got angsty beats where I’m kind of pissed off, but also more stoney stuff, weird stuff, and super wistful sad songs, and soundscapes. I had a little story for all of it.

What's the little story? 

All the songs are about distractions. I used to have panic attacks almost every day, but not anymore. It used to make me angry when I was anxious, and irritable. Sometimes I would get really high when I was feeling displeased with myself. I guess it’s about difficulties dealing with life and doing things the wrong way sometimes. 

I saw you open up for funk band Lettuce in Oakland earlier this year. There was a lot of enthusiasm and energy onstage, and songs sounded more amped up than the live recordings.

If I played exactly what’s on record it would be boring. One thing that makes a record interesting is having the perfect mix and sound design choices that won’t work in a big room. And when you work with [drum] loops, the dynamics don’t change as much. We have no singer, so dynamics become very important live. 

Things have to become more dramatic, and arrangement has to communicate those arcs very clearly. We would get applause in the middle of songs, because people don’t know who we are, and because we crafted the arrangement a certain way, to make it super clear what’s happening, which is super important for instrumental music. You have to set things up and move the spotlight around the stage musically so people know what to look at.

You’ve collaborated with Drake, Terrace Martin, Moses Sumney, and Kaytranada, and your work with Anderson.Paak’s album “Ventura” won a Grammy. How do those collaborations come about? How is your collaborative work different from solo work?

They’re not too different. I’m still just doing me. I play the way I play, the only way I know how to do it. Usually people who call me want me to do what I do. I hear an idea, and just play the idea.

Drake’s producer wanted a piano outro on a song, and asked me to record a voice memo and send it over. I put together two ideas and he said cool thanks. The whole thing took 10 minutes. That’s how a good team works. Focus on what you’re good at. 

You started making hip-hop beats in high school. How did you get turned onto hip hop?

My sister had a boyfriend, the summer before my junior year of high school, who was a big Dilla fan. I had a friend who was a big hip-hop head who was into Big L, Mobb Deep, Kendrick Lamar, and Nas. It was mainly friends of mine who had really good taste. 

Why did hip-hop resonate with you?

For me it was just the sound. I wasn’t really listening to rappers at first, and I didn’t know the history right away. I loved the sound of J Dilla and Madlib, that sound of electric current running through preamps and a needle on vinyl, converted and sampled and pitched down, looped backward. 

I love the sound of sampled music. It’s totally out of this world. We’d be smoking weed, driving around and listening, thinking, this is insane. Dilla had such precise time-feels that were so specific and unique. I couldn’t believe how accurate and perfect they were. 

Your dad is also a pianist. What were your early experiences with music growing up?

My dad plays piano every day. He’s into that boogie boogie New Orleans style. I grew up listening to John Coltrane, Miles Davis, and Oscar Peterson, basically the entire Blue Note catalog from the 50s and 60s. I remember being shocked at music school that some of the music majors did not know about this stuff. I was like, if you haven’t heard [John Coltrane’s ] “Blue Train,” you must not like jazz. 

In college, I’d practice for a few hours, go to my combo rehearsals, then jam with friends. All my homies would hang out in my dorm room until like 4 a.m. There’d be eight people in there, smoking weed, listening to music like Coltrane. But we weren’t just listening. Everyone would show the solo they really liked, and gesture with their hands and conduct, and sing the solo as the music played. It was our favorite thing to do. Rewinding and playing phrases over and over again. You gotta love your thing and develop your love for that thing.

What are you looking forward to in 2024?

I’m doing a Europe tour and an Asia tour, touring with [Grammy-nominated drummer and composer] Nate Smith, and working on a bunch of albums. I am not limiting myself with artistic output this year. I’m doing all the things. I’ve got a solo piano project, a pair of trio albums, and an ensemble album. There are four or five albums on the docket. I’m investing time over a long period to get a lot of things done. And if it sucks, it’s all good. Boom!

Here’s a MUSIC NERD “The World According to Kiefer” playlist, with songs by artists that influenced him, artists he’s toured with or collaborated with, and songs by Kiefer himself.