Emphasizing the role of Gerstenhaber algebras and of higher derived brackets in the theory of Lie algebroids, we show that the several Lie algebroid brackets which have been introduced in the recent literature can all be defined in terms of Poisson and pre-symplectic functions in the sense of Roytenberg and Terashima. We prove that in this very general framework there exists a one-to-one correspondence between non-degenerate Poisson functions and symplectic functions. We determine the differential associated to a Lie algebroid structure obtained by twisting a structure with background by both a Lie bialgebra action and a Poisson bivector.