Jacob Collier, Part 1

Musical genius and multi-instrumentalist Jacob Collier joins us today for part one of a two-part conversation. In 2011, when Jacob was only 17, he began posting videos to YouTube of himself singing and playing music. His break-out video, a rendition of Stevie Wonder’s “Don’t You Worry ‘Bout a Thing” received millions of views and praise from musical legends like Herbie Hancock, David Crosby, and Quincy Jones.

Since then, he’s gone on to release five albums, including his 2016 self-produced debut In My Room, and this year's Piano Ballads, an 11-track album of  improvised piano pieces he played at various shows during a recent tour.

On today’s episode, Bruce Headlam speaks to Jacob Collier about making his latest live album, his creative process, and his musical admiration for Stevie Wonder. Jacob also plays piano throughout the two episodes, and breaks down advanced musical concepts.

You can listen to a playlist of some of our favorite Jacob Collier songs HERE.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
Pushkin. Today's the first of two episodes featuring a musical
genius multi instrumentalist, Jacob Collier. In twenty eleven, when Jacob
was only seventeen, he began posting videos to YouTube of
himself singing and playing music. They were a massive hit.

(00:36):
His breakout video, a rendition of Stevie Wonders Don't You
Worry About a Thing, received millions of views and praise
from musical legends like Herbie Hancock, David Crosby and even
Quincy Jones. Since then, he's gone on to release five albums,
including his twenty sixteen debut In My Room, and in
twenty twenty two's Piano Ballads, an eleven track album of

(00:59):
improvised piano pieces he played at various shows during a
recent tour. Throughout his career, Jacob's collaborated with artists like Sissa, Coldplay,
Hi Dollar Sign, Tory Kelly, Daniel Caesar and her He's
also won five Grammy Awards and is the first UK
artist to win a Grammy for each of his first

(01:19):
four albums. On today's episode, Bruce Hellam speaks with Jacob
Collier about the making of his latest live album, his
creative process, and his musical admiration for Stevie Wonder. Jacob
also plays piano throughout the two episodes, illustrating advanced musical concepts.
These conversations with Jacob are the world's most interesting music

(01:41):
theory class ever, a masterclass. This is broken record liner
notes for the digital age. I'm justin Mitchell. Before we
get into the conversation, here's Jacob Collier's live rendition of
Can't Help Falling in Love? Wis males only fools rushing?

(03:12):
But I can hell falling in love? Over shoot? I stay?

(03:41):
Would it be onon VI? Con hell falling in Love?

(04:02):
Year like the river flows surely to the sea Doe
and so he goes somethings are my take, my take,

(04:44):
my horse life to because I can falling in love?

(05:49):
Jacob Collier, thank you so much having me. It's great
to have you here, you know, as part of your
quest to remake all of Western music. Oh gosh, is
that my quest? It seems to be your quest. You're
very busy. That was the old Elvis tune. Yes, indeed,
and that's from your new album Piano Ballads, Sure which
first tell me just a little bit about the album,

(06:11):
and then I have many, many questions about what you
just played, but first tell me just the idea behind
the album. Sure thing, Okay. So I've just been on
tour this year, which has been very cathartic, especially after COVID,
and I've done seventy shows so far. One of the
challenges that I set myself in order to kind of
keep myself on my toes was in every show I
was to play a different piano ballad, and that the

(06:32):
rule was this piano ballad was totally improvised. As long
as I know the song, I let whatever comes out
come out, and that is what it is. And so
many of the ballots on tour i'd actually never rehearsed
or played ever before. And I sat on stage in
the show and I thought, right, I'm going to do
a rendition of X or y or Z and just

(06:52):
kind of see what happens. And it was very interesting
to follow my energy throughout the tour and see which
ballads kind of ended up connecting with me and connecting
with the crowd. And I really loved the experience so
much that I thought it would be nice to share
a kind of vignette of my most favorite ballot. So
I released this album about a month ago now, and
it's eleven of the seventy and it's my absolute favorite

(07:15):
ballads thus far. I'm going to keep on doing this
throughout the rest of the year of touring. But that song,
which I always think of, it's been called wise men
say it. Actually it's called Can't Help Falling in Love.
It's a yeah, one of the greatest songs that I've
ever encountered. I performed that on tour actually using my
vocal harmonizer, which is an instrument that I had custom built.

(07:35):
I collaborated with my very different Ben Bloomberg, and we
built this instrument together, and there's a performance of the
song through that instrument. It's like almost like a vocoda.
But I thought today I would play it on the
piano because I've never done that before. So that was
a spontaneous rendition. Do you remember the first time you
heard that song. I can't remember the first time I
heard that song. It was probably a few years ago.
It's such a classic tune and so many people have

(07:56):
reinvented it with such vigor and personality. So I've always
been drawn to the song, but I've never really thought
to do it until now, but that song was special
on tour for another reason, which is that across the
US portion of the tour, in every show of the tour,
I had the audience sing one word from that song,
and so in Portland they sang wise, and then in

(08:17):
Vancouver they saying man, and then in Seattle they sang
say like this, and it went on like this, and
it just so happened, by complete coincidence that by the
final show of the tour, which was in Columbus, we've
done every word of the song exactly to the number,
which is completely unplanned. But what I then did when
I got home was string all the cities together and
you have this great, big, long rendition of the song
which is about one hundred thousand people singing together, which

(08:40):
is such a philosophically dreamy and sound idea in my mind.
And so I actually just I released the video of
that about a week ago now, because I actually had
every member of the audience record themselves singing the word
with their phone, and there was a QR code hanging
above the merch table at every show, and so at
the end of the show, the audience members would scan
the videos into the QR code and send them to

(09:02):
me at home, and when I got home I compiled
it was over ten thousand submissions of different videos, and
in total the number of things, as I say, about
one hundred thousand. And I spent a lot of time
editing all of that audio together and worked with an
incredible video team whose name is Light Sale, and they
and I edited all these little faces. So if you
if you watched the video, there's all these little mosaic

(09:23):
tiles of these audience members, each from each city, singing
each word of the song. There's something, I think in
that song that everyone can connect to. You know, there
is something listening to this album and really listening to
it despite your technical skill, which we're going to get
to in a minute. There's something very old fashioned about
people singing sitting around at piano. What happens to be
you at the piano. But there's something very and maybe

(09:44):
there's a post pandemic feeling, something very comforting about it.
Well for me, I definitely feel comforted. I think to me,
I've spent much of my life and career making these
kind of multilayered tapestries of sound, and for me, it's
always been such an important place to kind of learn,
but also to share just by sitting at the piano
and playing. And so yeah, it felt like an important

(10:05):
thing on the tour, just to have a moment in
amongst the chaos of the full production, because tours it
is a vast thing. You know, there's six of us
in the band, there's lights, there's staging, there's about one
hundred musical instruments on the stage and we're all hopping
around between all of them. It's it's a lot of fun.
But this moment in the show where I just sit
and play a song on the piano feels, as you say,
an intimate, comforting and rather old fashioned. The anticipation of

(10:27):
the crowd you can feel when they recognize the song
firstly and then they're invited to sing tremendous release for them. Yeah, yes,
I think so. I love it when everyone sings together. Now,
I want to ask a little bit about when you
sit down at the piano in one of these concerts
and you think I'm going to play this song, do
you know the key you're going to sing it in
when you sit down. No, I normally decide at the

(10:49):
end of the introduction, So I'll sit and play a
few notes, and it's like following your nose, you know.
You think, oh, I'll play, you know, oh, and then
and then suddenly I'm in F sharp. I don't know why,
but that just fell out, you know. So so oftentimes
I'll start playing, and I'll play for a couple of minutes,
and sometimes I haven't even decided what song I'm going

(11:10):
to play, you know, until the end of that introduction,
I think, do you know, I think I'm going to
do How Deep is Your Love? Or I think I'm
going to do Caledonia or whatever. Yeah, and the other
thing I'd like to do it just because it's fun,
and sometimes it really helps tell the story of the song.
Is is change key throughout? So you may start in
one key and then move to a different keys as
the song continues. If I'm taken there, so one thing

(11:31):
you were doing, and I'm not sure if you did
it this time, you're modulating, Yeah, from key to key. Yes,
and you're also reharmonizing. That's true. Can you just briefly
explain what that means? Yeah, sure, I'll hop to the piano.
So modulating is the idea of moving the gravity of home, right,
like musical home. So with this song. If I do

(11:54):
wise men say this is my home, I'm a F
major today, if I went that's a different key that's
in D flat or I mean a right. So on
the piano, we have twelve keys, and there's all sorts

(12:16):
of ways to move between them. But one of the
things I'd really like to do most is, yeah, as
I said, to find a way from one key to another.
And it can feel really like a bigger lift when
you change key. What's the hinge you use to move
from one key to another? You know, in modulation they
heard at the end of songs, you know Willie Nelson
goes up a tone, right, Yeah, are you just looking
for common tones between the notes, because you don't, you

(12:39):
don't just modulate up a tone like you're just not
there for like slightly higher. Yeah, you're You're like, there's
a different degree of difficulty. So when you're when you're
moving from one key to another, what's the signal that
you can do it? What I found myself doing is
building bridges from one key to another. So say, for example,
if I'm an F, which i am this note, a

(13:02):
right A exists in other keys besides, so for example,
D R a ism in D major and in F major.
It lives in both both worlds, right, So there are
all sorts of ways you can move between keys. But

(13:22):
if I end up singing an A, if I go
faalling right, then I've moved changed. But the A was
my bridge from one to the other. You know, It's
almost like visualizing different different kind of tributaries away from
the river that you're sailing down and then kind of

(13:45):
having faith that you'll find a way there, because a
lot of the things that happen when you imbroise happened
by chance. And if you're too contrived about it, or
even too thoughtful about it, then it can it can
remove the natural storytelling of the thing. When I spent
many hours of my life sitting at the piano and
thinking about these different sounds and how they connect to
each other. But when I sit on stage and sing

(14:06):
a song, I'm not thinking about any of that stuff.
I'm just singing the song. And it may it may
end up that I find myself starting in F and
ending in D flat. You know, it might just be
one of those days, And you can turn off the
more deliberate part of your brain to do that well,
to me. It's a bit like talking the English language.
I'm not consciously thinking as I'm talking to you about
grammar or spelling, you know, even though those things are

(14:28):
helpful to think about when I'm learning how to put
my language together, it helps me contextualize things. But when
I'm talking to you now, I'm improvising based on my syntax,
my sort of internalized syntax, which comes from people I've
listened to talk and time I've spent thinking about words
and writing words and practicing talking a lot at home
when I was a kid, you know. So it's a
similar approach I think to playing. I can tune into

(14:51):
what the chords are, you know. I know, for example,
that the A is a third. I could describe it
as a third, but it's also just the note, you know.
It doesn't have to be called a third or have
a name at all. But I understand the kind of
emotional properties of that note, all the ways it can move,

(15:16):
and you can follow those things. So it's melodies, harmonies, rhythms,
all these things kind of connect. But yeah, I don't
tend to be particularly thoughtful on stage. Sometimes there are
days where I am, and I think those are the
days where I'm I'm I'm in myself, you know, I'm
within my own world, and it's it's sometimes harder in
that space to really tell a story and connect with
a room. I think there's an old expression in jazz,

(15:36):
now it's time to forget all that shit and just
play exactly. Yeah, I couldn't put it better myself, So
that's modulating. We didn't talk about reharmonizing, which is something
you do. When I say you're remaking Western music, you're
essentially reharmonizing Western music. As far as I can tell,
it is one of my hobbies. Yeah, show me one
of two of the things you did to reharmonize that tune.

(15:57):
So this dude goes right. It's very simple tune, Slae
because every note I've just realised, every note from that
song is actually in one scale, the major scale. It's
very lovely and welcome sound to most ears. So when
you think about harmonizing and this, I might get a

(16:17):
bit nerdier, But when you think about harmonizing, you're essentially
departing home and arriving home. That's like, in a nutshell,
that's what you're doing with a song like this. So
basically I'm going that's what I'm that's the journey in
a very very crude sense. So there are all sorts
of ways you can depart from home, right, And when
we think about harmonization, it's easy and pleasurable to think about,

(16:40):
for example, the idea of localities. You know, keys that
are neighbors to f and I think that the two
most kind of most sound neighbors to ff fs are
called one, you could say, is called four, which is
B flat just around the corner, and called five, which
is around the other corner, right. And actually you can

(17:02):
play chord one, four, and five. You can play almost
every song that's ever been written, because so many songs
are made from those chords. And there are all sorts
of permutations of these chords. So even if you just
take the chord F major, if you reorganize the notes
in that chord, then you have what's called inversions of
the chord, which are like different sensations, different ways in

(17:23):
which that chord can feel. So we call this one
root position, like it's most grounded form. This one. It's
slightly more it's like it's perhaps on its waist somewhere.
It's still grounded, but it's it's it's it's moving. It's
it's not stable because the third, the A is in
the base, right, so maybe it wants to go there, right,
it wants to move. And then the final one it's

(17:45):
actually I really this inversion. This is called second inversion,
and it's when we have the fifth in the base.
And I really like this in version because it's like you,
you are arrived, you are here, but you're not really
you're not here. You're just kind of purging, right, You're
you're you, you've arrived, but you're you haven't fully arrived.

(18:08):
And so when I think about these chords and harmonization
re harmonization, I'm using these chords as kind of emotional
devices to tell stories. So the idea of how home
you are, that's a concept that it's not that's not
musical in nature, that's human. So human concept. I'm this
amount pulled home, or I am this amount safe or
this amount stable. You know that these are things that

(18:29):
we understand as people. And so you as a harmonizer
have all sorts of devices as to how how you
want to move people. So stay with these first three notes. Well,
I could just do and that doesn't go anywhere really,
but or I could just do, which is a slight,

(18:51):
sweeter version of again not really going anywhere. But if
I went, then I've moved somewhere, and that's a bit drastic,
perhaps the first phrase of the song. But F, which
exists in F major, also exists in D flat major,
which is where I just went to. And that's cool
because flat major is actually it's quite foreign to F.
It's quite far away key. And so what you can

(19:16):
do when you harmonize is you can really take people
by surprise. Right, I mean a chord like that, it's
very austere. It's a kind of bitter sweet chord because
these notes are tugging on each other and these notes
are stable, and that note is sour, you know, compared

(19:41):
to the sweetness of this, Right you think, oh, and
I mean again, it's it's just storytelling. Tell me, what's
the chord you're playing now? This chord, well, it's you
could call it a B a B major seven sharp five,
so it's a B major with a seven and a six.

(20:03):
But the fifth, which is this is actually sharpened, so
it's it's what we call like an augmented chord. I
suppose an augmented chords are naturally quite quite stretched and open.
It's like an unnaturally large open gap. But if I
were to do that, oh, I've ready made some contrast.
And now when I go and you start to really

(20:28):
paint pictures, you create tension and you release tension. And
so you know this obviously when you're practicing this and
sitting at the piano, you're thinking, you're, okay, what are
these core? How do they fit together? What are my
common tones? But when you sit on stage and improvise,
you're just painting a picture from from your mind, you know.
So it's a split second decision. Sweeten, it up lead

(20:56):
at home, away from home, heading towards home, and I'm
not going to change key because I feel like it, Sweeten,

(21:18):
I've changed key. Change key again. So I actually started
an F and then I went to D flat, and
then I would end up in E flat, which I
didn't really plan. But but these these kinds of things
happen not only when you have you've acquired at a

(21:41):
language of sorts, but also mainly when you're just fearless
enough to give stuff a go. You think, oh, what
would happen if I did this? And then you try
and sometimes it's great, and sometimes it's it's horrendous, you know,
But I'm kind of here for all of it. And
I think that one of the joys of touring in
this way is that all the imperfections of figuring this
stuff out in real time, it's all shared as an experience.

(22:01):
It's I'm not keeping this to myself or it's just
for me to hear in my practice room or closed environment.
I think you always learn most when you put yourself
in the real world and learn a skill, and I
think that for me, this experience on tour was almost
like a determination to learn how to do this freely
and truly be comfortable with whatever kind of gets thrown

(22:23):
at me. Whether it's something in my own mind or
song or something from the audience or whatever. It's it's
a practice of being very present and kind of awake
to yourself. We'll be right back with more from Bruce
Endlum and Jacob Carlier. After a quick break, we're back
with more from Bruce's conversation with Jacob Carlier. Reharmonization, particularly

(22:45):
chord substitution, is a big feature of jazz. Yeah, were
there players you listen to that inspired your interest in
chord substitution. Was it just something that you always had? Yeah,
I mean there are so many people. Even if you
think of someone like Stevie Wonder, you know, Stevie Wonder
is one of these extraordinary humans who writes these really

(23:06):
universal songs. But even within his own songs are really dense,
colorful chords, and he's really kind of being able to
bridge the gap between this this dense, emotional, harmonic language
and kind of just this universal songwriting. But when I
was a teenager, there's a group called Take six that
I'm sure you're familiar with them. Sure, they're just an
unbelievably killing a group of it's like a six part

(23:27):
gospel jazz singing group. And the kinds of chords that
they would come out with, you know, a chord just
like you know, the kinds of thirteen chords and stuff
like that. I hadn't really heard anyone do what they
did until they did it, you know. And it wasn't
just their own original music, it was the way that
they reimagined songs. Like they got a Christmas album called

(23:49):
We Wish You Americ Christmas. I think it's called It's
a great title for a Christmas album. And they would
take songs that I knew as a kid, but they
would put a spin on the songs harmonically just completely
blew my mind. And so I think that gave me
permission as a child to think, oh, so it's cool
to do that. Then I can I can take a
song like you know, Twink Twinkle, Little Star or Isn't
She Lovely? Or whatever happened to be and work out

(24:11):
a way to do this in my own harmonic way.
So when I was a teenager, I got so deeply
kind of really really into and obsessed with the idea
of taking a melody and harmonizing and crazy ways. And
there's one arrangement I did of a Stevie tune called
Don't You Worry About a Thing? You know? That's ad

(24:33):
And there's a bit in the middle where it goes
right and I remember thinking, oh, man, that would be
fun to rehrmonize because it's just a chromatic scale, you know,
how does he harmonize it? He sort of goes right right,

(24:58):
And then I so something like that. The fun of
that was thinking, if you remove any idea, any concept
of functional harmony, like you remove the idea that we're
in any key, or that any chords need to belong
within each other's families. You just take every note on

(25:32):
a journey that's very dense harmonically. But for me, especially
at that age seventeen eighteen, when I was really getting
into this, this was so important for me to do
this kind of experiments because I was discovering cause I
didn't understand my ear would find a chord like even
this chord. It's not really a name for that chord.
I mean, you could say it's a cartal voicing that's
made of fourth, or you could say it's like a

(25:52):
C major seven over the made I mean, it's a
strange chord basically doesn't really have a name. But I
has a feeling and I love that feeling. And so
if every one of these notes moves to a satisfying place,
regardless of your key center, I mean that again, it's
quite a foreign cause it's a flat minor over f.

(26:17):
You know, every note has a pathway like a journey.
So when you re harmonize that part of that song,
you weren't actually thinking in terms of chords. You were
just moving your fingers so you had the sound you wanted.
I would say I was thinking in terms of cause,
but I wasn't thinking in terms of tonality. I was
thinking more in terms of voice leading, which is like

(26:38):
a name that we give to the idea that every voice,
if this chord is a five voice chord, and every
note within that chord has it has its own pathway,
you know. So it going back to wise men say,
if you think about it being soprano, alto tenor ound
base right as Bark would think about it, why right,

(27:00):
then every one of those those paths needs to have
its own melody. So for example, the alter part goes
why dude, I can sing that, the tene goes Whisey, right,
base goes Wis and the baseline is always the most
important if you've got these two things going in motion,

(27:25):
and that's always very sound. And so yeah, each of
these voices has its own pathway. So so if I
do this crazy complex kind of course, it's the same principle.
Every every note within the chords kind of needs it
a satisfying destination. If one part is going, then it's
not fun to sing and you don't emote with it.
If every path has a journey and a destination, then

(27:46):
you can you can emote with it. And I don't
think you need to understand all these notes and their
momentum to feel it, you know, because when I know,
when I was a kid, I would hear these chords
go past in you know Stevie Wonder songs, and I
wouldn't know what. I don't know what the chords were,
but I felt I felt them. I felt what the
chords did. And I think my passion and fascination to
this day is how how do I reverse engineer that

(28:09):
those kinds of emotional reactions to music that I experienced
as a listener, How do I reverse engineer that as
a creator of music? And it basically just starts with
being curious, you know, it doesn't start with knowing everything
on being aware. It just starts with being open to
figuring stuff out. Tell me about growing up. Your mother's
a musician, she's a violent er. Your grandfather is a musician. Yes,

(28:29):
also a violin player. Yes for sure. Okay, it seems
you broke the family curse. You don't play violin. Yeah.
I started playing violin when I was two, and I
gave up by the age of four. No, I thought
that's wonderful, too impatient. I wanted to go and have
a result, you know. But the thing about the violin,
I mean, it's the most beautiful instrument in the whole
wide world, but if you pick it up a go,

(28:49):
it doesn't sound good for about a year. You have
to just sort of play open strings for ages before
you can even make one note sound good. And I
think as a child I was I didn't have the
patience for it. I want, I wanted to hit the
drama and to go back, and that was so kind
of instantaneous, you know. So what was your first instrument
after the violin? I suppose my first real instrument was

(29:10):
that the cassio, a cassio keyboard. So I think I
played something called a CTK eleven. I think it was called.
But it was just a bog standard but excellent keyboard
with two hundred sounds and one hundred rhythms, you know,
so the rhythms you go through all these different genres
you have sort of you know, Boston over and and
poker and rock and roll and stuff like this, and
it was it was great, you know, you skip through

(29:31):
the things and it would go, you know, and you
go through and I learned kind of learned how music worked.
Through that thing, and then you have these sounds trombone, tympani,
you know, vibraphone, viola, or it sounds like I wouldn't
know that these sounds in the real world unless I'd
had access to that instrument. Nowadays, I mean, man, it's

(29:53):
crazy now what you can do. And in something like
garage band or logic, there's all these extraordinarily well recorded
samples of you know, full orchestra, synthesizers, drum machines. It's
it's really kind of overwhelming and amazing, and I think
growing up now as as a musician, there's so many
things you can play with, which is both thrilling and
also troubling because one of the great things about that

(30:14):
keyboard is there were just two hundred sounds. I didn't
have any more than two hundred. Now there's infinite that
sounds any sound in the world. So I loved having
that as a device or exploration. There's even a little
sampler inside where you could layer things up. So I
would do like a drum, a drum beat, and then
I would on the second one, I would do bass,
you know. Then I'd do a piano thing, or a branch,

(30:35):
trumpets or whatever. And just playing around and music was
going in to my mind because my whole family was
musical and there was in every corner of the house
that someone was either playing or listening to music. So
it wasn't like there was a shortage of material. But
the crucial thing for me was having a keyboard, an
instrument where I could actually throw paint and for it

(30:55):
to stick. And when I was seven years old, I
actually got this recording stuff I called cue bass, which
is a way in which you can layer tracks in
the computer, and that was very exciting for me. You know,
little kids pick out melodies on tiny keyboards. You always
interested in harmonizing those notes. Yeah, for me, it was
chords chords first, but I mean melody was was was inevitable,

(31:16):
but but harmony was the thing that I really got
got my rocks off on. It was like, whoa you
can that's crazy? Oh man, that's a that's an unbelievable sound.
There's so many things going on there for someone like
as a kid, for someone with musical ears to get
my ears around. Wow, there's there's five sounds there, but
they are together one sound. And there's also within that

(31:39):
this sound and this sound which are two different worlds
and they rub against each other. Oh, and just like that,
the rubbing, I mean that that's such a special part
of music for me, is just like the way that
notes interact with each other. But as a as a kid,
I mean, I would sit at the piano for hours

(32:00):
just doing this, and then I'd move one note. It
changes everything, right, note by note it changes and each

(32:31):
one of these is a different universe. It's just a
different world, and I feel myself moved by them. I'm
moved by the way that these interact and feel. And
so yeah, I think as a kid, you can take
any melody in the world. That's fine, But it's the
way that you clothe it that that is really what

(32:54):
thrills me most. I'm assuming just watching you you have
perfect pitch, I do. Yeah. Do you think that helped
you sort of figure out the relationships between them? Thinks?
So yeah, I mean, if you take this sound, you know,
being able to hear, be able to ascertain that there's
a D sharp and a G sharp I any is helpful.
I don't think that you need perfect pitch to become

(33:15):
interested and very good at this, but it's like a
sort of cheat code kind of it's like an ease
of access, you know, being able to say be flat,
like I know that's a B flat, but without having
to check an instrument. It mostly helps with with audience
singing actually because I don't have to refer to an
instrument to get the audience to sing a chord, which
maybe that safe for example, of the introduction to a

(33:35):
song came. Then sit down and play a song and
they're already in the key that I was in, but
without me, without me having to check or okay, you
know it's it's not I can kind of plug the
notes out of my mind and and that that's actually
very handy. There's nothing crazily supernatural about it. I think
it's just it's a type of memory that you can
develop if you're very familiar with the particular way of
thinking and working. So there was clearly classical music in

(33:59):
your house for sure. Growing up. One of the kinds
of music was it you mentioned Stevie Wondering. Where did
you first hear Stevie Wonder? Oh my mom is like
the biggest Stevie Wonder fan, and she's she's all about Stevie,
and I think, yeah, as a kid, it was just
it was so many, so many parts of Stevie's discography
would just be in the house. I remember there's an
album he may called Hotter than July, and the first

(34:19):
song on that album is called did I Hear You Say?
And it starts with this like oh, and it was
so exciting. I remember dancing as it, just dancing as
a child, thinking I'm so exciting, you know, it's so
so fun. He is one of those artists that, even
with all the gold records and all the acclaim, he's
still strangely underrated. Yeah, I would say so. I mean, yeah,

(34:42):
underrates that. It's a funny word. But I think that
I think the thing when you're when you get as
big as Stevie has gotten, is that you're taken at
face value as someone who is just big only and
big big is not the deepest you can be. You know,
big is big is a scale question, not not a
breadth or depth question. And so Stevie did achieve the

(35:03):
biggness of scale. But I think the thing that he
achieved that was more important. And I think the thing
that has stayed, the that stood the test of time,
and the thing that I revere and all of my
Peers Revere is the depth of what he was doing sonically, harmonically, vocally, tonally, lyrically, politically.
I mean, he's just so in touch with everything, and so,
you know, I think the idea that he was able

(35:23):
to scale that depth on such a global scale is huge.
But it's funny when you say, yeah, he's underwater. I
think perhaps it's because people think, oh Steve, oh yeah,
he's really famous, isn't it. You know, he's a really
famous musician and he does lots of songs that everyone knows,
which is very true. But the deeper you go into Stevie,
the more you feel, and I think that's like a
real sign of greatness. Is that? Also, don't you worry

(35:45):
about a thing that the song that made you famous
because you did a YouTube version of it. That's from
his best side of music. I think the second side
of Interrovisions. I think it's like the best side of
any It's higher ground. Jesus, Children of America, you haven't done. Yeah,
that's fulfilling. This Oh man, that album is just crazy. Yeah,

(36:05):
it's album. It ends with the mister no just oh yes,
such an incredible god. It's just it. I mean, such
a statement, and I think you can also you hear
when he's you here, when he's thirsty and so from
I think my favorite currently, my favorite Steve album might
be Talking Book. And it's not because it's his most
refined album or complete as a thought process. It's it's

(36:26):
that he's so he's so thirsty to figure it out.
He's like, he just wants to write songs. Can He's
just so desperate to play around with with stuff, and
and you can you can feel him being and he's
twenty one when he's doing that up. He's discovering it
before our ears, you know, before our eyes. He's figuring
it out on that album. And I think that later
on in his career he'd figured it out already more.

(36:50):
And I mean nothing he's ever made has not been tremendous,
But I think that there's a youth and an experience
of gathering and being moved by something in the present
about that early stuff where he's he's just he's just
ravenous for it. And you can tell that as a
as a listener. It's interesting reading back about him and
time because there was a point in which Motown sort

(37:12):
of thought it was over for him, that he was
a child prodigy. You might sympathize with this because you
were so young when you started. They thought he'd peeked.
And then I think he produced that great Spinner's song
It's a shame, and I always thought that was so
unfair because he's not a guitar player primarily, but it's
one of the greatest guitar licks of all time. That, yeah,
how did he do that? No, I know for sure

(37:32):
that the thing that I think with Stevie was so
cool and I think we need to remember is you know,
he made that album called Where I'm Coming From right.
He was twenty years old when he made it, and
it was kind of his first record after the Motown years,
where he thought, okay, this is a statement and it's
a weird album. Man, it's dark and gnarli and it's
it's not you know, it's not amongst his most palatable work,
but he needed to make that album. It's there's some

(37:53):
amazing stuff on there. And I think that the amazing
thing is that he was given the chance to make
that album. It's like, of course you of course made
and we'll put it out. Of course we'll put it out.
Because if he hadn't made that album. If he tried
to make a hit record at twenty, he wouldn't have
done it because he needed to go into that depth
and the depth of music of My Mind and Talking
Book before he managed to get to something like Inner Visions,

(38:14):
you know, or songs in the Key of Life. I
think that there's this kind of disease that you know,
you have to make if someone doesn't make popular music
at one point in their career, you know what, it's
all over for them, and it's all going downhill. I
think it's a it's a really tragic kind of thing
because people under fulfill their potential as experimenters by negating

(38:35):
some of the darker or more gnarly interesting, strange ideas
musically in favor of things to which people, which are
more people will like and relate to. And you know,
I think this is a problem that's it's deeper than
the music industry. I think it's it's a human tendency
I think to kind of disregard or think of parts
of ourselves, the non palatable or darker parts of our

(38:57):
personalities themselves, as kind of weaknesses you can say or
not things to be discussed or shared but I actually
think those things, those things make us so much, even
even more sometimes than the parts of us that we've
we've got all figured out. It's welcoming those parts of
yourself in that makes you a deep person and a
whole person and a real person, because you can't just

(39:17):
be the good stuff. You have to welcome in all
the stuff. And Stevie is such a shining example of
someone who musically really got in touch with the depth
of an experiment and through that came around to these
totally eternal, universal songs which borrowed from and learned from
and gleaned from the kind of experiments that were stranger,

(39:39):
and had he not done, would not have informed those experiments,
and I think would not have made that music quite
so deep now as someone who started so young and
was part either so young, Is that a journey you're
conscious of making, I would say so. I think my
career started almost by accident. I didn't think of myself
as starting off a career when I was making those
YouTube videos at home. I thought, I'll just make some

(40:01):
videos and it'd be really fun. And mostly I really
I just wanted to push myself musically as far as
I could possibly go in every direction, because I was
so ravenous for understanding staff and for playing around with stuff,
and so I did that stuff, and it was it
was almost this kind of this accidental symptom of those
experiments that people started to listen to the music. And
I remember I got an email from Take six, my

(40:22):
childoed heroes, and and that was closely followed by an
email from Pat Matheny, who was not one of my heroes,
and then following that it was Herbie Hancock, and then
finally it was Quincy Jones and and I think that's
when I sort of thought, gosh, perhaps there is something
in what I'm doing that you could describe as having
a career being a musician or being an artist. You know,
I thought of myself as someone who is eternally fascinated

(40:42):
and playing around. And I'm a musician for sure, But
I don't know if I thought about myself as a
as an artist for a little while yet. And I
suppose it wasn't until I made this album called in
My Room, which is the first album I made, and
I made it on my own, in this room in London.
That's when I really thought, Okay, I'm going to write
some songs which I hadn't really done much of before,
and I put this music into the world, and I

(41:02):
think that's when I'll feel like this is my story
at the beginning, you know, even though my story had
been going for twenty years before, with the experience I've
been doing, it felt like that was the first time
I'd kind of thought, Okay, this is a statement that
I'm making as a cohesive Jacobean thing. And I felt
really strongly that I wanted to kind of produce the
album myself and mix it myself. And I played every

(41:22):
instrument on the album when I did every single thing
for that album myself, because there were all sorts of
people who thought, oh, can I produce it or can
I mix it? Whatever? And I was quite firm about
doing it myself in some ways. It regardless as to
whether that was even the right thing musically, I think
it was definitely the right thing philosophically for me because
I was able to learn how it felt to be
the author of all the different parts of my experience
and my exploration. And I definitely took my time, and

(41:47):
I'm very glad that I did. And I would credit
not only Quincy who at that time. Was he became
a sort of godfather slash manager figure to me, but
also someone like my mum who was just so present
in the process and very much encouraged me not to rush.
I think my mum's never really cared about the idea
of oh gosh, you know, Jacob's a big star, always
got celebrity. It didn't really feature in her mind. I

(42:10):
was never put under any pressure. We should point out
you're wearing a T shirt or you're sorry, you're wearing
a sweatshirt. It's your mother's name on it, right that
this Yes, Susie Collier number one fan. Right, yes, says
Susie Colliers number one fan. It was given to some
of my mum by a found out my mom's that
should be the only thing in your merch table. Yeah, totally.
I'm I'm so here for that. She truly is the greatest,

(42:32):
and I think she had a way a meeting since
I was very very young, of not not put me
under pressure to be a thing. It was a question
more than an answer. It was how do you see
the world, Jacob, But how do you hear this? How
do you experience this? We'll be right back after a
quick break with more from Jacob Collier. We're back with

(42:52):
the rest of Bruce Ellen's conversation with Jacob Collier. Did
you have trouble letting go? Because sometimes people who go
into studios this is the myth of I don't mean
the myth that it's not true, but I mean the
mythology of Brian Wilson. He goes in to do Smile
and it can't get finished. Could you've trouble just saying
at some point it's got to go out in the world,
it has to be done. Yeah, I have. I definitely
experienced trouble in that way. I think when you have awareness,

(43:15):
you're awake to all the different elements of something. Or
I could just make this, I could turn the kick
drum up zero point five dB, or I could I
could equ out a little bit of two hundred and
forty hurts from the vocal. Or oh, I could just
nudge that drum thing by a tenth of a second.
You know, those kinds of details when you when you're
aware of them, it's really hard to let go over them.
Because everything you hear in your own music when you're
making it becomes those kinds of zeros and ones. If

(43:37):
it was just a tiny bit this way, then it
would be more, it would be better, it would be
more emotional, it would be more a more concise statement.
And sometimes as well, it's like it's loosening. Oh it's
too tight. I need to make it sloppier. Let me
just make it a little bit sloppier, and then it's
gonna be just right. And all this is possible now
in a way that wasn't available. Yeah, I mean, this
is the thing is the miracle and the disease of
our time is that these tweaks are endlessly possible. So

(43:59):
I mean exactly as you say, I think there is
a there's a certain point where it's like, well, I
need a deadline to work against, you know, so so
that things get done or things can be born int
the world, because if there is not a deadline, it's
just this utter infinite thing that it could always I
could always do a new thing or a fresh thing,
or a tweak or whatever. That said, there are certain
things I think that I that I make and have

(44:20):
made over the years, and I'm experiencing now I'm making
where I know that I can't do the thing I
did better than the thing that I just did. I
think when you're faced with total infinity, which is one
of the kind of privileges and challenges of my life creatively,
there are immense reliefs to be found when you ground
yourself in a particular form. I'll get thank good as

(44:41):
I found a form. It's one of the reasons I
love playing these songs on the road so much is
because I'm it's it's totally unlimited, but I'm held together
by the fact that there's a song with words and
a beginning, middle and an end, and a crowd in
a room. There's just the right criteria for me to
feel actually very free. Because if I were with a
song at home with no audience, in my own spare time,

(45:03):
it's way for it to gather form because there aren't
the confines of a listening crowd, an audience who can
sing and who who are aware and awakes to the music,
and a certain amount of time in the set that
I need to feel you know, all these things that
make that possible. I think for me, Yeah, one of
the creative quests of my life is ways to contain
my ideas and my essence. And when I do it well,

(45:25):
I think it's you know, a concise expression of infinity.
That's kind of what I aim for. And it's much
easier said than done, because I find that that. Yeah,
there's so much in the world to express and explain,
and there's so many ways to say things. But there
are those times, even say with the English language, where
you say something with a sentence in a way that

(45:47):
it could not have been better said than the way
you've said it. That's like writing a song where you think, what,
I don't need to try and write that song everyone,
because I've already written. It's done, and that's always such
a relief, think, oh God, it has done. I finished.
It's it's good. And those moments are very kind of
seldom and been very very welcome to me. You know,
you're making me think of the famous psychologists. Stephen Pinker
years ago at a conference, raged a lot of people

(46:10):
by saying that music had no evolutionary value, it was
not valuable in the evolution of people, and a lot
of other neuroscientists have said, well, actually, it's one of
the crucial ways we learn cause and effect and expectation.
Just as you said, every note you're playing it has
a home. It's trying to get to and that's something

(46:30):
that actually children learned from songs, oh totally. Whereas you know, pinkers,
I mean the awful world he was painting. I don't
mean in general, but of music is it's sort of formless,
and it does, it does go on forever, and you
can't contain it. Yeah. Well, I suppose then that brings
up the philosophical question of whether something that goes on
forever has value in the present or even in gathering

(46:51):
form over say generations. I would say yeah. I would
say music is very, very similar to language, spoken language,
or visual languag or whatever. And I think that as people,
we naturally have a yearning for and a gift for
connecting and communicating ideas to each other. One of the
things we do best. The music is one of the
more delicious dialects kind of in which we can do this.

(47:16):
But you can express by screaming or shouting or stamping
or roaring or talking or crying or laughing whatever these things.
And I think music is it's like an extended limb
of these sensations in life, and it's a really visceral
kind of coloring palette where you can you're able to
be very descriptive. If we stop communicating in person with

(47:36):
each other, if we end up being siloed within our
own languages are kind of digital languages and we don't
connect communicity. I think that's when we stop evolving, because
we evolve from each other, with each other by each
other's ways, each on our own terms, but as a collective.
And I think that music has an accelerated gift at
offering people experiences that give them access to that. I
think we've learned that's not what technology provides. It's like

(48:00):
a mirror in a sense. It's an extension of our natural,
very pure wish to form meaningful connections with each other.
And you know, I would say musically, I mean we
were discussing earlier on the idea if you know two
hundred sounds on a cassio versus you know two million
sounds in musical software, both sides are real. You could say, well,
what a pity. You know, there's so many possibilities and

(48:22):
so little guidance. You know, it's hard to make a start,
or it's hard to beat whatever. But you could also say, well,
what an immense cathartic relief that our children have a
way of playing with sounds that truly is as infinite
as the world and the only limit is their imaginations.
And so technology, I mean, it's enabled me to have
a career to share music with the world, to create

(48:43):
visual form, musical form, to collaborate with you know, hundreds
of musicians all over the world over FaceTime, and we
transfer and drop box all these kinds of things, let
alone amassing a digital audience. And I think, you know,
being able to share meaningful things with the world just
as much as it's distracted me as the same with
everyone else from the real world and takes me out

(49:04):
of the present and all sorts of things. But it's
a double edged sword, and it's able if we choose
to really augment the parts of us that make us
really human. Although for you you have the experience now
of playing in concert in which you're bringing all these
people into your songs. Growing up, did you play with
each other around the house? Was sort of collaborative music

(49:26):
a part of her growing out very much. So, so
we will sing in my house. So my family is
like me and my mum and my two little sisters,
and and so we we sing us mentioning Barker on
SATV Sopartelebates. We sing four part bark carras Christmas carols
like whenever we possibly can, whenever we other day we're
at all four in the house, which now is actually
quite seldom, but we'll sing. It's such a delight, it's

(49:48):
so so nice. And at school, you know, I started
lots of bands at school. I wore different hats, you know.
I started like an African drumming ensemble with a bunch
of gemba drums, and I started an improvisation and group
where everyone just improvised, And I played drum kit in
my concert band at school, and I did some arrangements
for the school choir, and I sang in the school quiet.
So I was kind of trying these different outfits of
working with other people, and I've really had had a

(50:10):
good time doing it. But I found that my fundamental
learning happened when I took whatever I learned home and
applied that to my own kind of internal introverted tapestries,
you know. And I think it's only over the last
ten years or so that I've really kind of learned
the skills or I'm still learning the skills of unpacking
those internal scientific balanced worlds and presenting them to people

(50:33):
in real life, you know. And it's funny. I've spoken
to people, some artists I really respect, really young and
people who blew up kind of over quarantine through videos online.
And now I'm faced with this challenge, or how do
I what is playing live? You know? How do I tour?
It's such such a different thing to do from sending
your phone on portrait mode and just playing out song

(50:54):
and having nice lighting. It's such a different thing to
stand on stage and say not just that I'm going
to sing the right notes and play my song, but
actually communicate that to a room. And I had to
figure that out over about a year or two when
I first started touring, because I told with a pretty
ambitious set up. I talked with the one man show.
So it was me in the center of a circle
of about twelve different musical instruments, and I was in
the middle essentially playing them all at once. So I

(51:16):
would play bass and it would loop, and drums it
would loop, and keys and it would loop, and guitar
and it would loop. Then I'd sing and I'd play
harmonizer and it was and I'd do a piano sol
over the thing, I'd loop, then it would change key.
You know. It was a very, very kind of involved production,
and it was it was quite singular from a technological
standpoint and really hadn't really been done in that way before.
And so a lot of it I was figuring out

(51:37):
as much as that anyone else was figuring it out.
But I think for the first kind of year or
so of touring, a year and a half of touring,
I was I was just learning how to play music
on stage and feel comfortable and be cool with the
fact that there was an audience there that was listening
in and a part of it. And you know, I
wouldn't say I was I was, you know, hugely nervous
or anything, But I would just say I hadn't figured

(51:59):
out how to really enjoy and be comfortable in a
situation where I'm under that kind of pressure. And and now,
I mean, I'm more at home on stage than I
am in many other areas of my life. It's like
I'm like a fish and water on stage. And I
think I've just I've learned how to not only kind
of survive and cope under pressure, but just alchymize it

(52:19):
in to the optimum comfort and creativity, and I think
that it takes time to do that. And I don't
think you can just spring out of the box straight
from YouTube or Instagram onto the stage and you know
you're fully formed. But because I think that all the
nuances of how to build a build a performance like
that take time. I mean, I'm very very aware of
all the different elements of my show. For example, that

(52:40):
I've been touring this year. You know, we got as
I say, six musicians on stage playing all sorts of
different kinds of things, and you know, even down to
the set design and the lighting. You know, I've sat
with the lighting operator. His name is John John Rodgers,
and sat with him and crafted exactly the tone of
the green that is triggered when Christian the drummer plays
the snare sound, you know, and a green light. But

(53:02):
it's like is that dark green or medium green or
light green? And how much neon is in the green?
How many decimals of a second? And does it take
for that green to fade out just to go or
you know, and so all these kinds of forms, they're
all part of the music, they're all part of the expression,
and it sounds kind of cerebral when I say it
out loud, But actually it's just a natural extension of

(53:25):
a communication form that I've been familiar with just by
being a human and being watching the world and thinking.
But it's it's right for there to be a blackout
when this word is said, or it's right for the
lights to go from left to right rather than right
to left because the attention needs to be moved to
this musician or away from this thing, or and all
those degrees. I think that as a creator of shows,

(53:47):
I think I've I've developed and I'm developing more and
more skills that the more I do it, And I
think that that it's the same, same, same, same is
true for everyone. I think the same was true for
the One Man Show. I didn't really understand what I
was doing at that time, but I was learning so
fast and so much. And what a privilege to be
able to learn in the real world with with real people.

(54:09):
And this still boggles my mind to still now to
go to a city and turn up on a stage
and and there's two thousand people who somehow they found
my songs. It's just crazy feeling. I mean, it's just
it never gets old. I never walk out there. Well,
of course there were people here. You know. It's why
would why would people know myself? Why would they know
my songs? You know. It's just it's an astonishing thing

(54:30):
and something I take very seriously as someone who kind
of builds experiences and shares things with the world in
terms of I want to communicate the best I could
possibly possibly communicate about how I feel as a human,
because that's my duty as an artist. I must explain
the world as I see it, because if people are

(54:52):
turning up, I mean, what a privilege to be in
that position. And I say I take it seriously with
the lightest possible touch, you know, because you could say
life is very serious, but it's also to be taken
very lightly, and I think the same is true with music.
Makes it Jacob Callier again for sitting down to talk
to us about his career and about his process and

(55:14):
about some insane musical theory. You can hear piano ballads
and all of our favorite Jacob call Your songs on
a playlist at Broken Record podcast dot com. Be sure
to subscribe to our YouTube channel at YouTube dot com
slash Broken Record Podcast, where can find all of our
new episodes You can follow us on Twitter at broken Record.

(55:35):
Broken Record is produced with help can Lea Rose, Jason Gambrell,
Ben Holiday, Eric Sandler, Jennifer Sanchez. Our editor Sophie Crane.
Our executive producer is Neil Reibell. Broken Record is a
production of Pushkin Industries. If you love this show and
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(55:56):
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Kenny Beats on Justin Richmond