Speaker 1: Pushkin. We're back today with part two of Bruce Edlam's
Speaker 1: conversation with YouTube sensation turned five time Grammy winner Jacob Collier.
Speaker 1: Were left out for our last episode, with Jacob talking
Speaker 1: about what it's like to perform to an audience of
Speaker 1: thousands of people after growing a fan base entirely online.
Speaker 1: In this episode, we'll hear Jacob play the piano and
Speaker 1: go deep on music theory. It's honestly pretty extraordinary. It
Speaker 1: isn't every day that a musician of Jacob's caliber takes
Speaker 1: a time to sit down at a piano and really
Speaker 1: break down his creative process in the theory behind it.
Speaker 1: He also talks more about his new album, Piano Ballads,
Speaker 1: and about how the old standard Moon River taught him
Speaker 1: the power of centering his avant garde arrangements on emotions.
Speaker 1: This is broken record liner notes for the digital age.
Speaker 1: I'm just mich Here's Bruce Adlam and Jacob Collier. One
Speaker 1: of your early experiences on stage, I read was you
Speaker 1: sang in a couple of operas. I think you're sanging
Speaker 1: Fought sec and Magic Flute. But then you did Benjamin
Speaker 1: Britten The Turn of the Screw, and you said I
Speaker 1: think it was his harmonies like blew your mind or something.
Speaker 1: Now I thought I would have to sit here and
Speaker 1: pretend to understand Benjamin Britten, and that was making me
Speaker 1: very nervous. And I do like the interludes from from
Speaker 1: Peter grind. Since I didn't know, I reached out to
Speaker 1: two people who do know. One's my brother Phil, who's
Speaker 1: a conductor in Europe. Actually he used to teach at
Speaker 1: the Royal Academy. Oh did I think? Yeah? And my
Speaker 1: other is my brother Dave, who's he's a music theorist
Speaker 1: at Eastman wonderful. So I said, what do I possibly
Speaker 1: say about this? They say, Britain's harmonies not defined by
Speaker 1: something in and of itself, but here's how they related
Speaker 1: to you. And maybe this is why you liked it
Speaker 1: so much. Your negative harmony uses what theorist Carl Inversion
Speaker 1: tell me about negative harmony and how you use it.
Speaker 1: So negative harmony is quite an ancient idea. It's an
Speaker 1: idea based in polarity. So the idea that what goes
Speaker 1: up must go down. You know, a tree has branches
Speaker 1: that grow up and roots that grow down, and it
Speaker 1: happens in nature. And so I had a teacher of
Speaker 1: mine when I was at the roy Academy for a
Speaker 1: couple of years. His name is Barack Schmoore, and Barrack
Speaker 1: studied with a very very great saxophon play called Steve Coleman.
Speaker 1: And Steve Coleman is just one of the deepest musicians
Speaker 1: who's alive, and he has got very deep into studying
Speaker 1: certain musicians. There's one that he cites. His name is
Speaker 1: Ernst Levy, who wrote a book called A Theory of
Speaker 1: Harmony and and I've dipped into this book and it's
Speaker 1: it's dense but fascinating, and the idea is actually really simple,
Speaker 1: you know. It's it's the idea that if you have
Speaker 1: a melody that goes you know, and you reverse every direction,
Speaker 1: what goes up must go down. So the reflection of
Speaker 1: this is this, right, So when you see the reflection,
Speaker 1: if there's a full tone up, it's a full tone
Speaker 1: down exactly. Yeah, It's like you put a mirror at
Speaker 1: this note and this is upper tone, so that goes
Speaker 1: down a tone right like that. So the idea is
Speaker 1: very simple. So Steve has has thought about this as
Speaker 1: a melodic idea, you know, so a phrase, you know,
Speaker 1: like that you know, and and if I flipped that
Speaker 1: as yeah, that's the reflection that kind of thing. So
Speaker 1: it's a really amazing melodic device. But for me, I mean,
Speaker 1: you know me, I'm all about the harmony. So I
Speaker 1: think the thing that I gravitated towards the most was
Speaker 1: that this in a harmonic sense. So if I'm if
Speaker 1: I'm in the key of F major in classical music,
Speaker 1: you think, what how would I get to F major?
Speaker 1: While we get there from a C seven chord? Right?
Speaker 1: So I say five one. So what earned S. Levey
Speaker 1: describes as one possible access of reflection is the idea
Speaker 1: of you take you take F and C, which is
Speaker 1: our kind of home key, and this this F and
Speaker 1: F and c the note but exactly between F and C,
Speaker 1: so that them as a duo that becomes the reflection point,
Speaker 1: the mirror. And if I reflect C seven over that access,
Speaker 1: then you come up with this sound. Right. So, and
Speaker 1: I mean you can imagine when I first say this,
Speaker 1: I thought, oh man, that's so thrilling the idea that
Speaker 1: the reflection of the dominant chord is as it's as
Speaker 1: led to the key. Because if you think about C seven,
Speaker 1: this note, which is a B flat. This wants to sink.
Speaker 1: That's where it wants to go. Right, So you've got
Speaker 1: this don't wants to this, don't wants to sink. That
Speaker 1: note wants to rise, and in this that note wants
Speaker 1: to sink, so that the gravity is equivalent that That's
Speaker 1: the crazy thing is that it's the same amount of
Speaker 1: gravity to f but it's reflected. So in classical music
Speaker 1: you might have or even in jazz you might have
Speaker 1: something like six two five one games And so if
Speaker 1: you do that with negative harmony, you get this amazing
Speaker 1: like that. It's a different flavor. So you say, how
Speaker 1: do I use it? Well, I'm not. I wouldn't claim
Speaker 1: to have the deepest understanding of polarity in all of
Speaker 1: its permutations musically, but I think that the concept of
Speaker 1: that really got me excited because in a very basic way,
Speaker 1: it's it's plegalizing every perfect cadence. And when we see
Speaker 1: plagueal cadence, it's like a four one instead of a
Speaker 1: five one. So five one is this and four one
Speaker 1: is this? Right, it's almost like a more of a
Speaker 1: gospel sound. So rather than going yeah right, it's going
Speaker 1: like what James Taylor would do? You know or Joanie.
Speaker 1: If if Joanie goes, oh, what she doesn't do is
Speaker 1: she goes right, and then right there's plaguels to plaguel cans,
Speaker 1: and then it's a plaguel cans on the plaguel cans,
Speaker 1: and you can even do a plague one on that
Speaker 1: and then on that, so you can actually do like
Speaker 1: instead of And that's so cool to me. Four four
Speaker 1: four one. And so do I think about this one?
Speaker 1: I'm improvising plane babs on stage consciously. No. But what
Speaker 1: I have done is familiarize myself with the materials of
Speaker 1: what that feels like in my own experimenting at home
Speaker 1: and practicing, and understood that the feeling of that being
Speaker 1: different from this is like a brighter version, and then
Speaker 1: the negative version it is darker, bright and darker. That's
Speaker 1: a universal thing. You wouldn't meet a person or a
Speaker 1: creature or any living thing that does not understand bright
Speaker 1: and dark. It's like, it's such a huge thing. And
Speaker 1: obviously these things are very subjective, but musically talking, if
Speaker 1: I arrive at f Major, from there it feels very
Speaker 1: different from him. I all right, from there, I mean
Speaker 1: it's such as so exciting. That's the negative one and
Speaker 1: the perfect one being you know, so what's the negative
Speaker 1: version of the dominant seventh? He would describe it as
Speaker 1: like the four minor six chord, so in f it's
Speaker 1: B flat minor six like that, or you could also
Speaker 1: describe it as the second degree of the scale half diminished,
Speaker 1: so g half diminished to fan he diminished. Is that's
Speaker 1: the tristan chord? Yes, yeah, it is, it is, indeed,
Speaker 1: and that's something Benjamin Britten used a lot. Britain had
Speaker 1: a way with harmony which still to this day. I mean,
Speaker 1: no one has touched him for the thing that he
Speaker 1: has done. But he was one of the only composers
Speaker 1: in the twentieth century who didn't go down the twelfth
Speaker 1: tone wrote. You know, he didn't go down that the
Speaker 1: serialism route. He didn't go down the kind of neo
Speaker 1: classicism route so much, and he didn't go down the
Speaker 1: kind of austere a tonal staff for highly mathematical stuff.
Speaker 1: He just kind of continued a harmonic language on his
Speaker 1: own terms, and it was really based in kind of
Speaker 1: folk music because being English and also just I think
Speaker 1: just being so deeply involved in the harmonic language of
Speaker 1: what had just come before him, But I thought Turn
Speaker 1: of the Screw had a twelve town theme. It does
Speaker 1: have a twelve tone theme, which is yeah, that's like
Speaker 1: the opening theme, which I just absolutely love. But I
Speaker 1: guess when I say he didn't embrace twelve tonality in
Speaker 1: a total form, it was it was part of his arsenal.
Speaker 1: He would draw in it to tell a story, a
Speaker 1: harmonic story based in his otherwise kind of fruiting language.
Speaker 1: But the twelfth tone thing, there were certain people who
Speaker 1: wrote music purely based in sure that as a form,
Speaker 1: and I think Britain had a way of alcomizing all
Speaker 1: that was going on around him. But he didn't do
Speaker 1: it for that being the sake of it. He didn't
Speaker 1: live and die by that conceptually, and I think he
Speaker 1: was able to pull from it and tell these stories.
Speaker 1: The thing with Britain, to my mind is, you know
Speaker 1: he would do this chord where it's as much about
Speaker 1: the notes that aren't there then the notes that are there.
Speaker 1: You know, a chord like that. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: Britain's uses chored. Maybe he has, but you know what,
Speaker 1: do you just tell me what you're playing there? Well,
Speaker 1: that's so that chord you could describe it as like
Speaker 1: an a an a dominant chord with the ninth, but
Speaker 1: it's a very strange voicing and I don't want to
Speaker 1: call with the ninth is this right? But if you
Speaker 1: do just there's no there's no e. If I did that,
Speaker 1: it's much more palatable. But he would Britain has a
Speaker 1: way of these things shining here and your ear. Here's
Speaker 1: the gaps. It's like these big gaps, and there's there's
Speaker 1: a there's like an austerity to it, like a cold
Speaker 1: water nature to it. But there's also a huge power
Speaker 1: and a delicacy, and he's just able to command such
Speaker 1: extraordinary tapestries of color and sound. And I mean another
Speaker 1: thing that was going on in the twentieth century and
Speaker 1: even before that, I think Britain used beautifully was the
Speaker 1: idea of kind of biternality. You know, you have one
Speaker 1: part of the music in one key and then another
Speaker 1: part in it totally different key, and if you had
Speaker 1: that's something very sweet up here. Yeah, it's really kind
Speaker 1: of this is amazing. It's an amazing feeling because your
Speaker 1: your mind has led in one direction by one and
Speaker 1: one direction by the other, and there's one area in
Speaker 1: the tone of the screw called Marlow, which I sang
Speaker 1: as a boy. Yeah, And it's this beautiful, like really haunting,
Speaker 1: innocent kind of thing, and beneath it, especially towards the
Speaker 1: end of the production, all sorts of really emotional, deep
Speaker 1: cause going underneath the surface, and it just maintains this purity. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I didn't understand those cause at that age,
Speaker 1: and I mean even to this day, I haven't sat
Speaker 1: down and gone deep in analyzing them, but the feeling
Speaker 1: of being a part of those cause as a member
Speaker 1: of the cast has stayed with me for life. And
Speaker 1: the idea of being that part of the cord or
Speaker 1: outlining that part of the innocence of the court and
Speaker 1: the storyline. It's reference to the darkness underneath. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's just so rich and so beautiful. And I think
Speaker 1: that I approached that music at that time completely without
Speaker 1: analysis because I was twelve, you know, and I was
Speaker 1: missing a bunch of school. It was really exciting. I
Speaker 1: got to skypoff lessons and go to Spain and learn
Speaker 1: this really dense, rich music, and I really kind I
Speaker 1: felt like I emotionally really understood it. I understood it,
Speaker 1: you know, far more than a lot of the having
Speaker 1: mates and doing stuff that kids do and having to
Speaker 1: socialize with children. I didn't get that as much as
Speaker 1: I understood Britain. With Britain it was like, Oh, I
Speaker 1: understand what's going on here. I can I can emote
Speaker 1: and relate to this as a form. Now you said
Speaker 1: it's a different chord the way you're playing in the
Speaker 1: right hand and in the left hand. Are they related
Speaker 1: harmonically or are they two completely different thoughts? Well, they
Speaker 1: can be related harmonically. I think normally there's a sense
Speaker 1: of gravity that each holds. And in the world of Britain,
Speaker 1: this has the D major has all of its own
Speaker 1: gravities and C has its gravities at the same time,
Speaker 1: and they don't have to connect. They doesn't have to
Speaker 1: be like whoa, you know, it's just so it's so
Speaker 1: boring when you think about harmony in that in that way.
Speaker 1: So and I think I used to I used to think,
Speaker 1: if everything is a scale, I think there's one unified sound,
Speaker 1: that everything had to be connected and analyzed vertically. But
Speaker 1: now I think I'm getting more of a kick out
Speaker 1: of horizontal harmonic thinking, which I suppose it is more
Speaker 1: in line with someone like Bach who writes these amazing
Speaker 1: four part things. But he doesn't think. I don't think
Speaker 1: you necessarily thought about like, okay, F major C major.
Speaker 1: He thought, this melody is going here, and this melody
Speaker 1: is going here. They can they connect in that way,
Speaker 1: and harmony is a byproductive melody in that situation. We'll
Speaker 1: be right back with more from Ruce Eendlam and Jacob Carlier.
Speaker 1: After a quick break, we're back with more from Ruce's
Speaker 1: conversation with Jake Carlier. You have a video. You have
Speaker 1: many wonderful videos, but there's one with you and Herbie Handcart.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that I'm thinking of now watching your play
Speaker 1: whereas he describes, and I'm wondering if this is related
Speaker 1: in playing jazz, he says, we'll play the arrival chord
Speaker 1: in the right hand and then play the chord that's
Speaker 1: getting there in the left hand. Yeah, there's this tune
Speaker 1: that Herbie taught men called Don't Follow the Crowd, which
Speaker 1: is a killing tune. And there's one moment in the
Speaker 1: tune where it goes like that, right, So you could
Speaker 1: harmonize that as a good old fashioned A flat seven.
Speaker 1: But Herbie talks about the idea of it being a
Speaker 1: C seven, oh, which is so great. And then after there,
Speaker 1: so he thinks about the right hand being that's actually
Speaker 1: disconnected from the left hand because the left haun is
Speaker 1: going five one and the right hand's going see D flat,
Speaker 1: just chromatic, right, And Herbie would say that that comes
Speaker 1: from the twenties, you know, that kind of this, you know,
Speaker 1: rather than very chromatic. Yea chromatic approach rather than you know, functional,
Speaker 1: But I would I think my end seas was to
Speaker 1: try and think of things vertically first. So I was like,
Speaker 1: how could you fit? How can you make that fit?
Speaker 1: You know, because you've got a dominant seven and a
Speaker 1: major seven, so you actually got all three of these
Speaker 1: notes at the same time. But that's it's great, you know,
Speaker 1: And and I like it because it tears the rule
Speaker 1: book up. And I think that's also why Herbie likes
Speaker 1: because Herbie is such a maverick, you know, that guy.
Speaker 1: He loves he loves getting inside the cracks of these
Speaker 1: things and finding chords that feel right. I mean. The
Speaker 1: first time I ever met Herbie was in Montoya in
Speaker 1: Switzerland in twenty fourteen, and the first conversation we had
Speaker 1: was it was like, hey man, how you doing, and
Speaker 1: within two minutes were talking about minor ninths. It was
Speaker 1: just like, hey, man, love minor ninths. This is just
Speaker 1: minor ninth sounds like this. You know, it's really gnarly
Speaker 1: kind of but if you put a minor knights in
Speaker 1: the right place, then it can be so beautiful. So say,
Speaker 1: for example, this it's such a beautiful austere sound, you know,
Speaker 1: Or if I spread that out these kinds of bubbling sounds,
Speaker 1: there's so many cool things that you can do with
Speaker 1: that interval, which you could say is the reflection of
Speaker 1: that interval, and a major seventh is also very important interval.
Speaker 1: But it was just fun to sit in this restaurant
Speaker 1: with Herbie over chicken and we were just talking about
Speaker 1: minor knights. It was one of the most where I thought,
Speaker 1: what is my life, you know, right now sitting with
Speaker 1: Herbie Hancock and Talbot minor knights. This is crazy. You know.
Speaker 1: Over the years, Herbie has become a really great friend,
Speaker 1: you know, and also a mentor, and I think I've
Speaker 1: learned so so much from him and sitting down and
Speaker 1: listen to how he thinks and talks and plays and
Speaker 1: so many life lessons with Herbie. It's not just musical lessons.
Speaker 1: It's not sitting down Herbie shows me a hit new voicing.
Speaker 1: It's it's you know, Hobby talks so much about you
Speaker 1: permission and fearlessness and how music comes straight from life
Speaker 1: and all these kinds of things. So a minor ninth,
Speaker 1: that's not that doesn't exist in a stuffy or textbook
Speaker 1: in the back of a library and some you know,
Speaker 1: godforsaken music theory book. It exists because it holds tension
Speaker 1: in the present. Now that is the sound? Now, well,
Speaker 1: what how do you use that? It's it's so expensive,
Speaker 1: you know, what expensive thing to use? And if i'm
Speaker 1: if I'm singing wise males right, that is a minor ninth?
Speaker 1: Well I could I could equally do which is that
Speaker 1: minor night there? And suddenly it's suddenly we get into
Speaker 1: into into Britain territory again, you know, the idea of
Speaker 1: things that rob you know, Britain. Britain would use a
Speaker 1: chord like that instead of like you know, it's like
Speaker 1: a chord like this. You could call this a D
Speaker 1: eleven chord, which case and sister g well, why is
Speaker 1: that chord so emotive? Well, you could say, you know,
Speaker 1: because blah blah blah has notes center scale as well,
Speaker 1: but that's not why it's emotive. I think because the
Speaker 1: g is already home. It's already home. Britain did this
Speaker 1: wonderful arrangement of what maybe I think maybe even composed it.
Speaker 1: It's called the New Year Carol, and he goes, it's
Speaker 1: a beautiful tune and that chord. Why is that so special?
Speaker 1: Because he could have just done yeah, it does a
Speaker 1: similar thing, but no, he keeps this. He keeps it.
Speaker 1: It's like a constant. It's like I'm it's a steadfast,
Speaker 1: the steadfast at home and even though we're not at home,
Speaker 1: we've got this card. We're still home at the same time,
Speaker 1: and you've got mine at night. This is the sacred
Speaker 1: mine night is there fighting, but it's it's resolved and
Speaker 1: unresolved at the same time. I mean, that's such a
Speaker 1: human feeling. Oh, it's just beautiful and I mean that
Speaker 1: And so where does an understanding of those sounds come from? It?
Speaker 1: It doesn't come from reading books, doesn't come from taking
Speaker 1: music classes. It comes from listening with an open mind
Speaker 1: and then playing with the things that move you about
Speaker 1: it and just and getting inside a sound and you know,
Speaker 1: and again it's a lot of this stuff is so subjective.
Speaker 1: But I think that that's one thing that Britain does
Speaker 1: so well is he controls tension in a very sweet
Speaker 1: but yet very dark way, where he's able to kind
Speaker 1: of leave space for your ear to intuit a part
Speaker 1: of the harmony that is maybe even not there, or
Speaker 1: feel something visualized common tones throughout music. But I don't
Speaker 1: think he thinks about this in a theoretic where I
Speaker 1: think he just think that's just his soul, you know.
Speaker 1: You know, one of the interesting things about this album
Speaker 1: is you can hear the audience reaction and there are
Speaker 1: times you're improvising and they don't know where it's going,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure you can even hear it, but
Speaker 1: there's a sort of tension yea. And this happens in
Speaker 1: a lot of concerts, but more so in yours, because
Speaker 1: they don't know where you're going. Suddenly you begin say
Speaker 1: let it be. You really took a long time to
Speaker 1: get to let it be. People are like, oh, that's
Speaker 1: a relief, yeah exactly. I don't think I decided necessarily
Speaker 1: that that was definitely the song I was going to
Speaker 1: play until I ended up here. I guess what interests
Speaker 1: me about it is there is this tension in popular music.
Speaker 1: And we're talking about Benjamin Britain, we're talking about Herbie Hancock,
Speaker 1: but you're very much in the pop world as well.
Speaker 1: There's always been this tension between musical knowledge and ability
Speaker 1: on one hand, and simplicity and what is thought of
Speaker 1: his sincerity on the other hand. You know, progressive rock,
Speaker 1: punk rock people prefer punk rock. Country is famously called
Speaker 1: three chords in the truth. Yeah. Right. Are there some
Speaker 1: songs that you simply can't do this level of reharmonizing
Speaker 1: on It surprised me. For example, you did Tennessee Waltz,
Speaker 1: which is very kind of traditional. It's probably a one,
Speaker 1: four or five. Yeah. Are you in the middle of
Speaker 1: some songs going you know, the song can't take this? Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are definitely moments where a song does not guide
Speaker 1: you to being reimagined heavily harmonically. There's one song on
Speaker 1: the album called all Let's Sea, which is maybe my
Speaker 1: favorite song on the album. It's a song by a
Speaker 1: guy named Jamie Cullum, who's just one of my favorite
Speaker 1: musicians from from England, and it's funny, I didn't do
Speaker 1: any rehrms or I did a couple of sneaky ones,
Speaker 1: but but I didn't fundamentally reharmonize that song because for
Speaker 1: some reason, maybe it was my mood or whatever. But
Speaker 1: but yeah, the song it just kind of I'm all,
Speaker 1: let's where no one bother Oh God, you fully for
Speaker 1: it doesn't need you know, it doesn't need that. It
Speaker 1: just it sings. And one of the joys of improvising
Speaker 1: is that you have to take yourself as how who
Speaker 1: you are on that day. So I remember when I
Speaker 1: did Tennessee Waltz, that was the fifth show in a
Speaker 1: row that we've done. We've done I think it was
Speaker 1: two Copenhagen shows, a Sweden show, one more show which
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting now, and then Oslo was the was the
Speaker 1: final of the five show. So I was exhausted, but
Speaker 1: I was also very kind of hyper. And my really
Speaker 1: difference Steane Carsonson, who's totally unbelievable Norwegian button mccordion player
Speaker 1: who also plays banjo and cabal and pedal steel. He
Speaker 1: actually brought his pedal steel for this and I asked
Speaker 1: him to sit in on the song Tennessee wats is
Speaker 1: a fun place to start because it's a song that
Speaker 1: kind of everyone knows, especially musicians, you know, really really
Speaker 1: know that song, right that. I mean, it's such a
Speaker 1: great song that actually it can survive some pretty severe departure.
Speaker 1: But I think for me that the thing I like
Speaker 1: about that performance with Stand is that I both of
Speaker 1: us have this way of climbing around and all some
Speaker 1: weird funny things, but the song is like a north star,
Speaker 1: you know, it guides us back and then we'll go
Speaker 1: off in and then Sonny will land at the song again,
Speaker 1: you know, and it brings us back home, so you know.
Speaker 1: But then again I think if I thought, oh gosh,
Speaker 1: I really shouldn't do this to the song, or oh no,
Speaker 1: that would be inappropriate, you know, or whatever thin these
Speaker 1: these principles are, I think less is less is always more,
Speaker 1: or you know, if you really have to treat things,
Speaker 1: these things with the respect and don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: think that's a that's that's not how life works. And
Speaker 1: I also don't think that that is a sound way
Speaker 1: of learning. I think that you have to give yourself
Speaker 1: permission to try at all. I think when I was
Speaker 1: a teenager, I kind of irrespective of the song. Sometimes
Speaker 1: I would take these things way way, way, way way out,
Speaker 1: And I think now I'm more inspired by the idea
Speaker 1: of kind of controlling the the density of the language
Speaker 1: in favor of the songs that are being sung, on
Speaker 1: the stories that are being told through the songs. And
Speaker 1: I think that's one of the things I'm enjoying about
Speaker 1: growing older, actually is you know, if I look at
Speaker 1: myself ten years ago, when I was eighteen, so much
Speaker 1: of the language was so new and I needed to
Speaker 1: push it that far. If someone, I mean people did
Speaker 1: try and tell me this, I didn't listen. But if
Speaker 1: people say, you know, to calm down, don't do less chords,
Speaker 1: you just just play the simple song, you know what
Speaker 1: I mean. That's like telling Stevie Wonder not to make
Speaker 1: where I'm coming from, it doesn't work. You can't make
Speaker 1: someone different from who they are, and it's not in
Speaker 1: anyone's best interesting. I mean, why am I making music.
Speaker 1: I'm not making music for other people to like it.
Speaker 1: I'm making music because I must make it. It's part
Speaker 1: of my skeleton, it's part of my expression, and I
Speaker 1: think that it's only in giving people the permission to
Speaker 1: be their full authentic selves, that you end up with
Speaker 1: a person that is actually grounded in the truth of
Speaker 1: who they are. And again, when you grow old. One
Speaker 1: things what growing older is that you're understanding as to
Speaker 1: your language and how to use it. I think it
Speaker 1: deepens and grows as you become older. So I think
Speaker 1: I'm now much more inspired by I mean, you could
Speaker 1: say simple, cause, but tryads. I mean simple you know,
Speaker 1: these simple things I really adore, like the clarity of
Speaker 1: these kinds of sounds when I was sixteen, and all
Speaker 1: I wanted to do is think was you know, wow,
Speaker 1: are these such cool sounds? You know? But I'm glad
Speaker 1: that I went through that, and I'm glad that I've
Speaker 1: come into the triatic world with those experiments in tow
Speaker 1: because it means that if I'm playing you know, wise
Speaker 1: men say or whatever, there might be a moment where
Speaker 1: I do sprinkle a chord that's quite expensive, followed by
Speaker 1: a simple chord, and then then you get into like
Speaker 1: really painting with with that language. It wasn't a question
Speaker 1: of should people have permission to experiment, because of course
Speaker 1: they always should. It's the degree or which a tune
Speaker 1: can absorb that kind of treating you know, rhythm changes
Speaker 1: are a lot of the big jazz songs are built
Speaker 1: that way. You know. I'm thinking one of because I
Speaker 1: do like country music and I like the pleasure of
Speaker 1: the three chords. You know. One of my favorite versions
Speaker 1: of a country music song is do you know Ray
Speaker 1: Charles doing You or My Sunshine? I think I've heard that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's fantastic, But I don't think he does much. I
Speaker 1: think it's a lot of he just sings the song.
Speaker 1: It's a lot of rhythmic stuff. Yeah, it just moves
Speaker 1: like nobody's business. But I don't actually think he does
Speaker 1: much substitution. Yeah, yeah, But to me, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: almost a self consciousness that do I like music that's
Speaker 1: too simple? Yeah? No, I don't think that that that.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's that's such a thing as that.
Speaker 1: It's hard as a listener sometimes, you know, I mean,
Speaker 1: because those the pleasures are very kind of well regulated,
Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, Willie Nelson's a nice guitar player. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of fabulous guitar playing in country, but but
Speaker 1: it's based on that foundation. They're not throwing in a
Speaker 1: lot of half diminish No, no, and I love it.
Speaker 1: For that reason. Yeah, yeah, I think certain songs can
Speaker 1: survive being kind of messed with, and other songs do
Speaker 1: kind of just fall apart. We'll be right back after
Speaker 1: a quick break with more from Jacob Collier. We're back
Speaker 1: with the rest of Bruce Ellen's conversation with Jacob Collier.
Speaker 1: I wanted to ask you about Moon River because you
Speaker 1: once said that's a song that taught you a lot. Yes,
Speaker 1: what did you mean by that? It's another It's an
Speaker 1: all of these songs like like Can't Help falling in Love,
Speaker 1: where every every note in that melody is in the
Speaker 1: major scale. So what's that song taught me? It's very simple,
Speaker 1: but it has such a journey intervaliqually, So when I
Speaker 1: said intervalidly, it's like the arcs of the melody are
Speaker 1: so lovely, is it. It's like rainbows, you know, It's
Speaker 1: like a line that's drawn like this, and those shapes
Speaker 1: are so strong that I think it held my language
Speaker 1: together a little bit, because you know, I came with
Speaker 1: that song ravenous for some chords. You know, I really
Speaker 1: want to take this song out on a journey, and
Speaker 1: then there are times where the song will dictate no, no,
Speaker 1: you stay within my world. You stay within the key
Speaker 1: that it's in, and then there are moments where where
Speaker 1: it almost physically it says fly go fly, and I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 1: all my all, my language comes out, and I just
Speaker 1: think that kind of almost spiritually, I think that song
Speaker 1: is so beautiful, and it's just the idea of the
Speaker 1: wonder of the world opening up before your eyes and
Speaker 1: almost having this this going on a journey as with
Speaker 1: a companion whier than a mile I'm crossing you in
Speaker 1: style someday. It's it's like it's imagining a world that
Speaker 1: that is endless and large and big and that you
Speaker 1: could share where after the same rainbow's end waiting around
Speaker 1: the bend my Hockerberry friend. It just describes a feeling,
Speaker 1: and I think some of my favorite songs describe a feeling,
Speaker 1: either through the lyrics or just through the chords and
Speaker 1: the melody. Rather than being about it's about this personal
Speaker 1: it's about this experiences, it's about a feeling of the world.
Speaker 1: Because that that song, it just opened my mind to
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, and I also idea harmonically, I
Speaker 1: really kind of pushed the boat out down Moon River
Speaker 1: and really kind of wanted to find new things. The
Speaker 1: final verse of that eight minute arrangement actually is in
Speaker 1: a it's in a key that does not exist on
Speaker 1: the piano. It's like between E flat and E oh
Speaker 1: you did, dude, And it's actually not on the piano.
Speaker 1: It's it's a quarter tone away. And but there's a
Speaker 1: a portion at the end of the arrangement after that
Speaker 1: where I moved between all these keys there aren't on
Speaker 1: the piano. And it's something I've been very, very excited
Speaker 1: by and interested for some time. But I really in
Speaker 1: a musical sense that arranging that song gave me a
Speaker 1: lot of understanding as to how to achieve things in
Speaker 1: a microtonal world, but based in and based in the
Speaker 1: emotions of a song that kind of held it together.
Speaker 1: So how does that work? How does the what's the
Speaker 1: emotional effect of switching to not a semi tone but
Speaker 1: a semi semi tone one? Yeah, yeah, microtone. Well, it's
Speaker 1: the same feeling as changing key chromatically on accano. Um.
Speaker 1: You know, if I'm playing Moon River, I have I've
Speaker 1: changed gay or whatever. Um um. Right, So it's a
Speaker 1: new world, it's it's it's just a different thing. Well,
Speaker 1: what's different about these keys that it's different, different color,
Speaker 1: different flavor, different feelings. So so with microternal keys, it's
Speaker 1: the same thing. It's just it's just even more subtle.
Speaker 1: So you know, if you, for example, are aware of
Speaker 1: only the major scale and you go this all sounds
Speaker 1: good or pentatonic, and every style of music in the
Speaker 1: whole world pretty much incorporates the idea of this pentatonic scale.
Speaker 1: It's a universal thing. And if I go, oh, that
Speaker 1: doesn't fit, that's that note is not in my language.
Speaker 1: Oh it feels really out and strange. How could anybody
Speaker 1: ever use that note? You know, why would you do that?
Speaker 1: But actually you can do it. Say if I take
Speaker 1: the E and I pivot, then I'm there. So the
Speaker 1: same is true with with microtonality. I think right now,
Speaker 1: based on the last five hundred years of musical instruments
Speaker 1: that have been built in twelve tone equal temperament, which
Speaker 1: is the idea that every semitone is the same size,
Speaker 1: and there are twelve notes in the noctive. There were
Speaker 1: lots of other ones, you know, there's thirty one note
Speaker 1: equal temperament, which is I'm actually a huge advocate for.
Speaker 1: I think it's really good. And so instead of do
Speaker 1: do do do do do. It's like you know, et cetera,
Speaker 1: and all these individual notes that all it's the same thing.
Speaker 1: You can still pivot. You could pivot two notes that
Speaker 1: feel outside you know, I can pivot from too, even
Speaker 1: though that note feels oh wow, no that's wrong, it's
Speaker 1: a wrong note. It's like, no, it's not wrong. And
Speaker 1: there are also some ways you can you can pivot,
Speaker 1: you know, using things like just intonation, which is like
Speaker 1: a system of tuning based in physics and harmonic ratios
Speaker 1: and things like that. It's just that our ears aren't
Speaker 1: are weak enough to it in the same way that
Speaker 1: if we are pentatonic people and someone goes, well, that's
Speaker 1: just never going to be in my system. It's not
Speaker 1: in the system. It's wrong. And assuming sometimes we have
Speaker 1: a way of think that's wrong. It doesn't fit into
Speaker 1: my system, you know what are damaging and dangerous concept politically, conceptually, philosophically,
Speaker 1: energetically to say you don't belong in this because it
Speaker 1: doesn't fit in my system of understanding and think of
Speaker 1: the things I think of the opportunities we have to
Speaker 1: connect with each other and ideas, but we shut them
Speaker 1: down because we are close to our own systems, and
Speaker 1: all of us do this. I mean, I do this
Speaker 1: and many aspects of my life because I'm a human too.
Speaker 1: But I try not to because I think that music,
Speaker 1: I mean, which has taught me so many things, definitely
Speaker 1: teaches me to welcome things and in the idea of
Speaker 1: not being a wrong note but more just like an
Speaker 1: opportunity to go somewhere else is way cooler as a
Speaker 1: way of thinking than thinking, well, that's just wrong. Rule
Speaker 1: it out. So when you did Moon, did you change
Speaker 1: it electronically like post production or did you adjust the
Speaker 1: instruments or was it all vocals? It was all vocals. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's about hundred hundred voices at once. It's a massive sound,
Speaker 1: And that's what I mean. It's the reason why I
Speaker 1: think the voice is the most kind of important and
Speaker 1: versatile instrument of all. But yeah, I just sang it
Speaker 1: in as I wanted to hear it. Having perfect pitch
Speaker 1: does that allow you to hear the in between notes
Speaker 1: as well? Well? It's funny because you know, perfect pitch
Speaker 1: is one it's you would say, oh, you know, it's
Speaker 1: absolute pitch. I can pluck a note of the air.
Speaker 1: But I mean it's just based on the notes that
Speaker 1: we've been given. So we've been given twelve available notes,
Speaker 1: and I think now I'm excited to kind of expand
Speaker 1: my you could say, perfect pitch into more than twelve.
Speaker 1: Have you played the Harry Partch instruments. Well, so I've
Speaker 1: never played one of his instruments, but Harry Partch, it's
Speaker 1: one of the most kind of important pioneers of microturnal instruments.
Speaker 1: There're been so many people over the years who have
Speaker 1: attempted to solve the problem of how do we make
Speaker 1: our chords sound really good but also put them in
Speaker 1: equal temperament. So yeah, I mean not to get too nerdy,
Speaker 1: but every note in the universe has a set of overtones.
Speaker 1: So if I if I say, which is a B flat?
Speaker 1: If I go, I don't know if you can hear it,
Speaker 1: it's going So this is naturally occurring. So if I
Speaker 1: go in a cathedral, which people did hundreds of years ago,
Speaker 1: no doubt you hear those overtones back come back at you.
Speaker 1: And so within every note is actually inherently a major chord.
Speaker 1: It's crazy. So this is why I think major feels
Speaker 1: consonant to human beings is because that sound is if
Speaker 1: I go, it's the it's in the chord, it's in
Speaker 1: the note, it's in every sound, so of course ours
Speaker 1: seek to hear that. The thing about the piano, which
Speaker 1: is a compromise harmonically, is that the third that D
Speaker 1: the third on the piano is actually it's actually really
Speaker 1: sharp on the piano in real life. In physics you
Speaker 1: could say everything's real life, but see it's really sharp.
Speaker 1: But the pure tone we call it the justly tuned third.
Speaker 1: Here's fourteen hundreds of a half step or a semitone flatter.
Speaker 1: Then the piano is tuned. So this is crazy to me.
Speaker 1: What does this mean? Well, it means that you can
Speaker 1: pivot to microternal keys. And this is this is the
Speaker 1: thing that really freaks me out. So if I if
Speaker 1: I take the D and that's now my tonic, then
Speaker 1: that my entire chord is fourteen cents flat. So now
Speaker 1: if I do that's a D major chord, the third
Speaker 1: of that chord would itself be fourteen cents flat. So
Speaker 1: now my F sharp is, which is quite a lot
Speaker 1: flatter than the one on the piano, and then that
Speaker 1: itself can become a major chord, and then the third
Speaker 1: of that is fourteen cents flat. So by this point
Speaker 1: we are what's what's my math forty two cents flat,
Speaker 1: which is almost half for semitone flat. So this is
Speaker 1: how at the end of Moon River, and also in
Speaker 1: other arrangements I did, I actually moved between microternal keys.
Speaker 1: I'm not just jumping there. I'm pivoting using just intonation, ratios,
Speaker 1: harmonic physics based intervals to guide the ear to a
Speaker 1: place where it doesn't know or sense anything is wrong
Speaker 1: or untoward. Because it's the same way as pivoting to
Speaker 1: a major from C major, but using the E. I
Speaker 1: don't feel like I've gone huge. It's not like going
Speaker 1: you know, it's not like you're not jumping to a
Speaker 1: foreign place. You can do that. But the thing I'm really, really,
Speaker 1: really excited and interested in right now is how do
Speaker 1: you unpack microternality but completely in functional chord systems and
Speaker 1: functional harmony, Because there's also people who make microtnal music
Speaker 1: that sounds really unlistable and it is very intellectual and
Speaker 1: it's just really jarring, and it can be very beautiful
Speaker 1: as well. But I think for me, the idea of
Speaker 1: these justly tuned cares and intervals pivoting using those sounds.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's crazy, man, that's so exciting. You're now
Speaker 1: on the hunt for ghost notes between the notes. What's
Speaker 1: next for you? Well, we haven't spoken about this too much,
Speaker 1: but I'm in the middle of a quadruple album. This
Speaker 1: is besides the Piano Ballots album Jesse Volume one, two, three,
Speaker 1: and four, And each of the volumes of Jesse has
Speaker 1: been a different It's like a different musical genre, different
Speaker 1: musical space, different set of sounds, and so it's like
Speaker 1: a fifty song, sprawling, kind of insanely ambitious project that
Speaker 1: I began four years ago, now over four years ago. Now.
Speaker 1: I wanted to lay down the foundations of my own
Speaker 1: musical understanding so that at the end of the fourth
Speaker 1: one of Jesse, I could like start my career. That
Speaker 1: was like my plan, and the way I wanted to
Speaker 1: learn was by collaborating with all my favorite musicians music
Speaker 1: I believe to be the most kind of extraordinary important
Speaker 1: people to me. And some of those people are old legends,
Speaker 1: and some of those people are ten years younger than me.
Speaker 1: But I was really really ravenous to collaborate because I
Speaker 1: just made this album in my room, and I taught
Speaker 1: it for three years on my own on stage, and
Speaker 1: I just really wanted that that human connection, so I
Speaker 1: started this project. So jesse Volin one was an orchestral album.
Speaker 1: By no means was it classical music, but it was.
Speaker 1: It was just it was music, just music made with
Speaker 1: an orchestra and my mind and instruments skills too, and
Speaker 1: so there was that. The Take six were on the album.
Speaker 1: Lauren Mvola was on the album All Sorts of Amazing People.
Speaker 1: And jesse Volin two was more of a sort of
Speaker 1: a folk record. I suppose, a record based out of
Speaker 1: the guitar and running songs, and and that album was
Speaker 1: packed with the collaborations to Sam Amidon, Katherine Takel. Leanne
Speaker 1: Lavas was on the album, Jojo Umari, Mark Romley was
Speaker 1: on there and she's extraordinary, and Steve I, the legendary
Speaker 1: rock guitarists, was on there. Jesse Voldin three was more
Speaker 1: of a kind of R and B. I hesitate when
Speaker 1: I say pop, but it was the most pop album
Speaker 1: I've ever made. These songs had electronic production four on
Speaker 1: the floor, so those things as well as you know,
Speaker 1: really kind of dense experiments and that album was t
Speaker 1: Paine and Jesse ray Is and Tory Kelly and Mahalia
Speaker 1: Ty Dollar Sign, Keyana Laday some really extoring people rhapsody.
Speaker 1: So what's next for me? Well, Jesse Vain four is
Speaker 1: on the horizon, and that is it's been a couple
Speaker 1: of years in the works and more excited by it
Speaker 1: than I can possibly say. It's been a challenge to
Speaker 1: kind of contain the overwhelmingly dazzling potential of what it
Speaker 1: could sound like and be in my mind because there's
Speaker 1: just so many things. But it's it's finding it's nor
Speaker 1: if it's finding its form, and it's it's really getting
Speaker 1: to the point where it's it's it's approaching a finished state. Now.
Speaker 1: I think within a few months it should be done,
Speaker 1: so that's cool. One of the things I'm most excited
Speaker 1: about is I actually recorded every audience on tour for
Speaker 1: the album, and so it's like a one hundred thousand
Speaker 1: voices singing in harmony on the record, And I think,
Speaker 1: to me, that's so exciting and feels philosophically very correct
Speaker 1: because I began my career laring my own voice on
Speaker 1: top of itself to create harmony, right and It's almost
Speaker 1: like I pose the question of what is harmony? What
Speaker 1: is connection? If harmony is the connection between things, what
Speaker 1: am I seeking here? What began as a journey in isolation?
Speaker 1: And it's by no means ending, but it's it's it's
Speaker 1: definitely the end of an era, Jesse era, the last
Speaker 1: five years of my life. What have I learned? While
Speaker 1: I've learned that everyone in the world has a voice,
Speaker 1: and what happens when you bring those voices together, that is,
Speaker 1: that's as much harmony philosophically harmony as I could possibly
Speaker 1: dream of conceptualizing. That is a feeling, that is a
Speaker 1: north that's the special thing. And so I'm really excited
Speaker 1: to incorporate their voices onto the album. I'm then excited
Speaker 1: to tour that album with the audiences themselves singing what
Speaker 1: they said. You know, there's this amazing kind of loop
Speaker 1: that goes around. Yeah. I'm working on so many other
Speaker 1: things besides Jesse Volume four, some of which I can't
Speaker 1: talk about, In fact, most of which I can't talk about,
Speaker 1: but with all sorts of different people on many different
Speaker 1: stages and different environments, in many different forms of art,
Speaker 1: and I think I'm just fiercely ambitious, but I'm also
Speaker 1: just trying to stay as in the present as I
Speaker 1: can with what I can pay attention to and give
Speaker 1: my due two right now, and right now, that's finishing
Speaker 1: Jesse Volume four, which I'm so proud of and so
Speaker 1: excited to share, and finishing off this world tour this year,
Speaker 1: which is Australia, New Zealand and Asia and a little
Speaker 1: bit of Europe for good measure, and then you know,
Speaker 1: soaring into the campaign of the album, which is creating
Speaker 1: videos and creating narratives and having conversations, and there'll be
Speaker 1: a tour for that album, I'm sure in the future,
Speaker 1: and after the album comes out, and you know, then
Speaker 1: I think the biggest challenge for me is leaving a
Speaker 1: blank page so that things can take me by surprise,
Speaker 1: you know, because I could plan the next ten years
Speaker 1: of my life and actually fill every day. So I
Speaker 1: think it's it's almost amount of just thinking, well, let's
Speaker 1: just leave room for things to come and surprise me,
Speaker 1: and people to come and surprise me, and for me
Speaker 1: to be swept off my feet a little bit, you know,
Speaker 1: by the things that happen in life that you can
Speaker 1: never plan for. But it's almost like improvising a ballad.
Speaker 1: You go on stage or you step forth in life,
Speaker 1: and there are certain things that you can hold on to.
Speaker 1: There are certain parts of language and knowledge you understand,
Speaker 1: and then then you have to just let it all
Speaker 1: go and see what happens. Well, thanks for spending this
Speaker 1: time with us. You've swept us off our feet, just wonderful.
Speaker 1: Thanks thanks to Jacob Carlier again for sitting down to
Speaker 1: talk to us about his career and about his process
Speaker 1: and about some insane musical dude. You can hear piano
Speaker 1: ballads and all of our favorite Jacob call your songs
Speaker 1: on a playlist at broken record podcast dot com. Be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot
Speaker 1: com slash broken record Podcast. We can find all of
Speaker 1: our new episodes. You can follow us on Twitter at
Speaker 1: broken Record. Broken Record is producer Helpful Lea Rose, Jason Gambrel, Benaladay,
Speaker 1: Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez, our editor, Sophie Crane, our executive
Speaker 1: producer is Label. Broken Record is a production of Pushkin Industries.
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Speaker 1: Right theme musics by Kenny Beats. I'm Justin Richard.