Latest / Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond / Jacob Collier

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Jacob Collier · Broken Record with Rick Rubin, Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Headlam and Justin Richmond

• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Pushkin.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Jacob Collier has built a remarkable career as a multi
• 0:23
  Speaker 2: instrumentalist and arranger, known for his complex harmonic approach and
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: collaborative spirit. He first gained attention as a teenager posting
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: multi track videos from his childhood bedroom in North London.
• 0:34
  Speaker 2: In twenty thirteen, his cover of Stevie wonders Don't You
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: Worry About a Thing caught the eye of the Quincy Jones,
• 0:40
  Speaker 2: who began mentoring him and helped launch his career. Over
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: the past seven years, Jacob's released four albums in his
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: Jesse series, ambitious, wide ranging projects featuring collaborations with artists
• 0:52
  Speaker 2: ranging from Torre Amis to Coldplay. He's won multiple Grammy
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: Awards and developed a following through his inventive live performances
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: and his willingness to share his deep knowledge of music
• 1:03
  Speaker 2: theory with fans online. Now, Jacob has made a dramatic
• 1:07
  Speaker 2: shift with his new album, The Light for Days. Recorded
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: in just four days using only a custom five string guitar,
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: It's a stripped down, intimate collection that explores folk, classical
• 1:17
  Speaker 2: and jazz influences with notable restraint. On today's episode, Bruce
• 1:22
  Speaker 2: Headlam talks to Jacob Collier about why he decided to
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: limit himself to a single instrument after years of layered,
• 1:29
  Speaker 2: maximalist production. He discusses the custom five string guitar built
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: for him by Taylor's master luthier Andy Powers, and how
• 1:36
  Speaker 2: its unique tuning opened up new harmonic possibilities. He also
• 1:41
  Speaker 2: talks about working with Johnny Mitchell, the influence of artists
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: like John Martin and Brian Wilson, and how growing up
• 1:46
  Speaker 2: singing Bach Carl's with his family shaped his approach to harmony.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: And he performed several songs from the new album live
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: in the studio. This is Broken Record, real musicians, real conversations.
• 2:05
  Speaker 2: Here's Bruce Headlam with Jacob Collier.
• 2:11
  Speaker 3: Sounds that you do.
• 2:16
  Speaker 4: Mm hm.
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: H m hm hm cool.
• 2:58
  Speaker 5: All right, you want to have a seat there and
• 2:59
  Speaker 5: we'll chat.
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, so I'll start here right.
• 3:01
  Speaker 5: Yeah you can. You can go back and forth as
• 3:03
  Speaker 5: you wish. So, Jacob, welcome back to Broken Record.
• 3:06
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me.
• 3:07
  Speaker 5: Well, thank you so much for coming in. And we
• 3:09
  Speaker 5: are talking about your new album, The Light for Day. Yes,
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: so tell me about making this this album.
• 3:16
  Speaker 3: Yes, So, I've spent the majority of the last seven
• 3:20
  Speaker 3: years making these four radically collaborative albums called Jesse. Jesse
• 3:24
  Speaker 3: only won two, three, four, and these were very very
• 3:28
  Speaker 3: broad creatively, very sort of extortionate, you could say, very
• 3:34
  Speaker 3: very very very diverse, very multiple layered, sort of kaleidoscopic albums,
• 3:39
  Speaker 3: and I knew that after finishing them, I want i'd
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: want to try something different. I didn't have any firm ideas,
• 3:45
  Speaker 3: but I knew in the back of my head, I
• 3:47
  Speaker 3: had this thought that'd be fun to embrace the idea
• 3:50
  Speaker 3: of making a record with just one instrument, to sort
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: of limit the palette. And what I ended up with
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: with this record was a four day window before my
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: tour began in May. I was going to go to
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: Asia to play some shows there, and I thought, what
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: if I make the whole album in four days. So
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: it was these two limitations. It was four day window
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: and a five string guitar, and that's how this album
• 4:10
  Speaker 3: came to be.
• 4:11
  Speaker 5: And it is very sparse sounding for people who know
• 4:15
  Speaker 5: your music, how many tracks would you use on a
• 4:19
  Speaker 5: typical song on this album compared to some of the
• 4:23
  Speaker 5: songs you did on Jesse, Well.
• 4:25
  Speaker 3: Everything from two to fifty probably on this album. On Jesse,
• 4:31
  Speaker 3: it's you know, there was easily in the hundreds for
• 4:34
  Speaker 3: every song. You know, there'd be moments where I'd have
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: you know, audience members from around the world involved, which
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: is many, many hundreds of microphones on top of orchestras
• 4:45
  Speaker 3: that I recorded, or choirs I recorded, and multiple instruments,
• 4:48
  Speaker 3: multiple vocal parts. This album was It's just a different
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: style of infinity. You know, I'm a firm believer that
• 4:55
  Speaker 3: you can render infinity out of anything. You can render
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: it out of infinity itself, but you can also render
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: it out of much more finite terms. So yeah, with
• 5:05
  Speaker 3: this album, I really I just I enjoyed both the
• 5:09
  Speaker 3: limited scale of the palette but also the timeframe. I
• 5:12
  Speaker 3: think it helped me make decisions because there's an unlimited
• 5:15
  Speaker 3: amount of things possible at all times, something I've come
• 5:17
  Speaker 3: to experience. So I think with this album it was
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: fun to really enjoy kind of that tight window for
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: making decisions. I also think it was fun to really
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: kind of like extrapolate on all the tonalities possible with
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: this five string guitar, because it's not just like a
• 5:33
  Speaker 3: singing songwriter folk record. There's also voices and other laid
• 5:37
  Speaker 3: guitars and sort of these colorful worlds, the colorful worlds,
• 5:42
  Speaker 3: but I feel like there's something that this guitar gives
• 5:44
  Speaker 3: as a spirit that just provides a sort of context
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: for the storytelling in a way that was quite satisfying
• 5:50
  Speaker 3: in the end.
• 5:52
  Speaker 5: You've talked in the past about how you called the
• 5:55
  Speaker 5: decoration the edge of songs, the multiple tracks, the vocal
• 6:00
  Speaker 5: things you add, the the you know, altered chords. You
• 6:06
  Speaker 5: think of those almost immediately when you're thinking of a
• 6:08
  Speaker 5: so a song you're covering. In this case, you really
• 6:12
  Speaker 5: restricted that in a way. A lot of these songs,
• 6:16
  Speaker 5: and you do some beautiful covers Close your Eyes and
• 6:20
  Speaker 5: and Beach Boys Song and Norwegian Wood. There's not that
• 6:24
  Speaker 5: much re harmonization, which of course is one of your
• 6:28
  Speaker 5: one of your signature moves. Did you go in thinking
• 6:31
  Speaker 5: that way or did the guitar just lend itself to
• 6:35
  Speaker 5: a maybe more straight ahead approach.
• 6:37
  Speaker 3: I think I found myself wanting to just do justice
• 6:40
  Speaker 3: to these songs in their own right. There are a
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: couple of expensive moments, for sure, but I would say
• 6:45
  Speaker 3: much fewer that I am used to. I think the
• 6:48
  Speaker 3: thing with this record, more than anything harmonic that inspired
• 6:52
  Speaker 3: me was it's like it's a world of a particular
• 6:54
  Speaker 3: world of of that that the sound of the instrument,
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: the way in which the guitar lends itself to I
• 7:02
  Speaker 3: think it's just it's a different kind of decoration. Like
• 7:04
  Speaker 3: one of the things with this album I really enjoyed
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: to do was this this thing where you you know,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: you have essentially a live take of a song. So
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: I stood and I performed like an entirety of a song,
• 7:15
  Speaker 3: vocal and guitar texts. This is album. Normal people record albums.
• 7:18
  Speaker 3: It's quite novel for me. I usually record all the
• 7:20
  Speaker 3: elements separately and collide them later. But with that full take,
• 7:23
  Speaker 3: I think there was an amount that that was the
• 7:25
  Speaker 3: unification for the ideas and the decoration I think I
• 7:29
  Speaker 3: had later was was sometimes it was sonically interesting, but
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: I think it was less sort of like harmonically driven,
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: and I think in a way that's always been in
• 7:39
  Speaker 3: my work and always been in the music. But I
• 7:41
  Speaker 3: think I've put more emphasis on some of the harmonic
• 7:45
  Speaker 3: irresponsibilities you could say, of the past than I did
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: on this particular album.
• 7:50
  Speaker 5: You've talked a lot about the harmony and the sounds
• 7:55
  Speaker 5: on this guitar. You should tell us about your guitar.
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: Many people know you play a five string guitars, how
• 8:01
  Speaker 5: it's tuned, how you see.
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: It, So this is a fun story. I grew up
• 8:06
  Speaker 3: playing a four string guitar when I was just a
• 8:08
  Speaker 3: wee lad called a tenor guitar, and they're rife into
• 8:10
  Speaker 3: the folk music, especially in England, and I never really
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: got on too well with the six string guitar. Like
• 8:15
  Speaker 3: as a kid, it wasn't something that appealed to me greatly.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: It wasn't something that threw itself into my imagination and
• 8:21
  Speaker 3: provided things. I think one of the reasons was because
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: you know, the foundations of the guitar are based in
• 8:27
  Speaker 3: shapes that when you play them, they sound familiar, and
• 8:32
  Speaker 3: I think as a child, I was always excited by
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: things that sounded unfamiliar. And when I heard first of
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: the ten of guitar, it felt both like something I knew,
• 8:40
  Speaker 3: but it also felt new and strange and unfamiliar in
• 8:42
  Speaker 3: a particular way. So that the ten of guitar, I
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: can show you the ten of guitar as being a
• 8:46
  Speaker 3: for scring guitar was tuned like this, which is the
• 8:50
  Speaker 3: same as like a violin or I suppose it's a
• 8:54
  Speaker 3: similar system to a cello, same as a mandolin, things
• 8:57
  Speaker 3: like that. So fifth's fifth based tunings. What I tended
• 9:01
  Speaker 3: to do as a child was to tune the top
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: string down a tone to their So that was my
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: that was that was the sound of the guitar for
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: me for so many years.
• 9:12
  Speaker 5: And I say, you've had a fifth to fifth, and
• 9:14
  Speaker 5: then I had.
• 9:15
  Speaker 3: A fifth, fifth, and a fourth and four and crucially
• 9:17
  Speaker 3: I had this octave here. So I got used to
• 9:23
  Speaker 3: that idea that you could you could find the sort
• 9:25
  Speaker 3: of the parallative and use it. So it developed a
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: bunch of shapes for this tuning, and the more I
• 9:30
  Speaker 3: played it, the more I realized, oh, it'd be really
• 9:32
  Speaker 3: cool to have a fifth string, because if I had
• 9:35
  Speaker 3: a fifth string, it would actually make whole chain symmetrical
• 9:37
  Speaker 3: because then you could have and at the very top,
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: which means you have two oxytes. You have this one
• 9:43
  Speaker 3: for the same note and then those are the same note.
• 9:47
  Speaker 3: And the shapes that I'd figured out for the original
• 9:50
  Speaker 3: four string would still work, you know, like the major
• 9:52
  Speaker 3: shape and office of things, but you'd have the ability
• 9:54
  Speaker 3: to access the shape from from one direction like that,
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: and also from the bottom so every shape is is
• 10:03
  Speaker 3: totally symmetrical. I don't know that makes sense, but you
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: could really find yourself with with interesting kind of like that.
• 10:11
  Speaker 3: There's an interesting openness to the to the to the
• 10:13
  Speaker 3: fifths of the tuning. But the fourths of the tuning
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: given now that it's two fifths.
• 10:18
  Speaker 5: So just to be clear, it's now it's the strings
• 10:21
  Speaker 5: are now the bass string is A, so.
• 10:25
  Speaker 3: I not the tune down to D. So this is
• 10:28
  Speaker 3: D A E A D. So it's like the e
• 10:31
  Speaker 3: is like a mirror, a.
• 10:32
  Speaker 5: Mirror, right, But the fourths on the top, the.
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: Fourths are on the top, the fifth are on the bottom,
• 10:37
  Speaker 3: so it's.
• 10:37
  Speaker 5: On the bottoms. It's like a could be like a
• 10:40
  Speaker 5: string bass yeah, yeah, for sure. And the fourth on
• 10:43
  Speaker 5: the top mean you can still you can play Chuck
• 10:45
  Speaker 5: Berry exactly absolutely and be are on bass player.
• 10:49
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, absolutely. So, so there are sort of two
• 10:52
  Speaker 3: two main vocabularies, one being a fifth thing, so you know,
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: mandolin players, violent players, these shapes are familiar and it's
• 11:02
  Speaker 3: easy to navigate in that way. The fourth stuff is
• 11:05
  Speaker 3: more like it's what comes more from the sort of
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: like LO and R and B world of the guitar.
• 11:13
  Speaker 3: And just having you know these closer shapes makes a
• 11:15
  Speaker 3: lot of sense. I think as a piano player, when
• 11:18
  Speaker 3: I sit down at the piano and play, because that's
• 11:20
  Speaker 3: really where I foundationally lived as a child, Mostly in
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: terms of an instrument, my left hand would often play
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: wider intervals than my right hand because the piano just
• 11:28
  Speaker 3: sounds better like that. You know, if you play really
• 11:30
  Speaker 3: clustery sounds in the left hand, it gets muddy, but
• 11:33
  Speaker 3: the right hand you can be kind of as expensive
• 11:35
  Speaker 3: as you want. Right So, I think the way the
• 11:36
  Speaker 3: voicings were positioned, in the way that the shapes I
• 11:39
  Speaker 3: loved worked, were that you'd have wider intervals at the
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: bottom and smaller intervals at the top. So I think
• 11:44
  Speaker 3: that my access point to guitar, which is less of
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: thinking of myself as a guitar player and more of
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: thinking myself as just someone who loves music and knows
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: the things that I know and loves the things that
• 11:53
  Speaker 3: I love. I think I was naturally drawn to this
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: sense that you'd have a slightly narrower space at the
• 11:58
  Speaker 3: top of a chord than at the bottom. It's kind
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: of mirroring the harmonic series because the overturned series of
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: nature that the bigger intervals are lower down, and for
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: whatever reason, it really tickled my brain. And you know,
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: I don't really play the guitar like guitar players necessarily do.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: I have a sort of quite strange and fairly unconventional technique.
• 12:17
  Speaker 3: But one of the things I like to do is
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I like to sort of play with my left hand,
• 12:23
  Speaker 3: that that's entirely my left of it. If I play
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: one note with my right hand, that all of that
• 12:29
  Speaker 3: vocabula comes from one comes from one hand. And I
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: think that to me feels like something that it feels
• 12:37
  Speaker 3: piano piano adjacent in the sense, in the sense of
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: playing a key on the piano rather than plucking with
• 12:43
  Speaker 3: one hand and playing with with another. And so I
• 12:46
  Speaker 3: don't necessarily think when we call pull off, pull off,
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: hammer ons, all that vocal, all that vocabul that I
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: love that. And I never really got into guitar through
• 12:56
  Speaker 3: the lens of like being a being someone who's picking liked,
• 12:59
  Speaker 3: and I think that suff's amazing. But for me, I
• 13:02
  Speaker 3: love playing melodies kind of essentially with both hands like
• 13:05
  Speaker 3: I would on a piano. So I'm I'm sort of
• 13:07
  Speaker 3: approaching the guitar a bit like a piano player. And
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: I'm super grateful to Andy Powers, who's the actually the
• 13:13
  Speaker 3: master builder for Tailor guitars, who is also a good
• 13:15
  Speaker 3: friend of mine. He's the first person who I mentioned
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: the idea too, who said, Hey, I think I can
• 13:19
  Speaker 3: build you this guitar that's in your weird brain. Because
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: for many years I've been playing in my imagination alone,
• 13:24
  Speaker 3: I'd figured out the shapes for a guitar that didn't
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: yet exist, but I knew that they would work if
• 13:29
  Speaker 3: only I could play the guitar. And then Adie said
• 13:31
  Speaker 3: I could build it for you. And this is the
• 13:32
  Speaker 3: exact one that he built.
• 13:33
  Speaker 5: This is the first one you will And you didn't
• 13:35
  Speaker 5: try on a six string like open tunings for example.
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: Oh, I totally did that. So my first kind of
• 13:42
  Speaker 3: my first access point to to kind of playing the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: guitar at all before this guitar was created, besides the
• 13:48
  Speaker 3: tenny guitar, was literally to rip a string off my
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: six string guitar, I would I would remove the top
• 13:53
  Speaker 3: string and then I tuned the top two strings of
• 13:56
  Speaker 3: those five to the same note, and it would be
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: like a teen guitar. And that was interesting and strange,
• 14:04
  Speaker 3: but I think that I loved the residence of the
• 14:07
  Speaker 3: guitar so much. I love the sort of brit the
• 14:09
  Speaker 3: forcavery so much, and then eventually I sort of manifested
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: this beast here.
• 14:15
  Speaker 5: One of the songs you cover on this album is
• 14:17
  Speaker 5: very fairy tale Lollaby by John Martin. John Martin people
• 14:21
  Speaker 5: might be familiar with may not be, but to me,
• 14:24
  Speaker 5: a lot of this album reminds me of that era
• 14:28
  Speaker 5: of British folk. John Martin, Nick Drake, Richard Thompson, who's
• 14:34
  Speaker 5: a huge favorite and he's been on the show. Were
• 14:37
  Speaker 5: you conscious at all of those sounds when you were
• 14:39
  Speaker 5: playing totally?
• 14:40
  Speaker 3: I used to absolutely crush on that album London Conversation
• 14:44
  Speaker 3: by John Martin, which is just him and the guitar
• 14:47
  Speaker 3: and has a really interesting approach to it. He plays it, yeah,
• 14:50
  Speaker 3: with a lot of these sort of hammerons and it's
• 14:51
  Speaker 3: quite groovy and it's it's less kind of like strummy
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: and more kind of a cult combination of fingerpicking and
• 14:58
  Speaker 3: rhythm and time and little licks and things here and there.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: So that was that was a lot of my reference
• 15:03
  Speaker 3: for the album, and Joni was not the huge inspiration
• 15:05
  Speaker 3: for me, and just the way that she heard solutions
• 15:09
  Speaker 3: through the open tuning systems and made it possible for
• 15:12
  Speaker 3: all of us as musicians to hear the guitar in
• 15:14
  Speaker 3: a sort of new light.
• 15:16
  Speaker 5: But and then you played with her a year or
• 15:18
  Speaker 5: two I did, I did.
• 15:19
  Speaker 4: What was that like?
• 15:20
  Speaker 3: To me? It was pretty extraordinary. You know, some people
• 15:24
  Speaker 3: are such giants that you never even you almost don't
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: consider that they're real people. And Jonie was someone who
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: you know, I knew that she was having a hard
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: time with her health a few years ago, and I
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: sort of, I think, in my mind put her in
• 15:36
  Speaker 3: this category of of just sort of like absolute Titanic
• 15:40
  Speaker 3: legend who I will never even meet or encounter. And
• 15:44
  Speaker 3: I was so overwhelmed to get to hang with her
• 15:47
  Speaker 3: and play with her. She's she'd been hosting these joney
• 15:49
  Speaker 3: jams is what she called them. People come around the
• 15:51
  Speaker 3: house playing Jony tunes, other tunes and just just having fun.
• 15:54
  Speaker 3: And so I became a part of that scene a
• 15:56
  Speaker 3: few years ago back instead of twenty one twenty two.
• 15:59
  Speaker 3: And then she invited me to accompany her at the
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: Grammys I think it was last year, playing both sides now,
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: which was a really a life highlight for me. And
• 16:08
  Speaker 3: then I joined it at the Hollow Bowl for those
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: two iconic nights there, which I think were the last
• 16:11
  Speaker 3: two gigs that she played with her sort of all
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: star band with Blake Mills and Robin Pecknold and and
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: all sort of luminary people. Lucius were there, and god
• 16:20
  Speaker 3: it was it was wonderful. So yeah, getting to absorb
• 16:23
  Speaker 3: a bit of her attitude was really really interesting. And
• 16:26
  Speaker 3: of course she's she's really punk, you know, and she's
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: such a jazzer like she she she phrases like like
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: like Wayne shorted us, you know, And it's it's no
• 16:34
  Speaker 3: wonder that they were friends because the way that Wayne,
• 16:36
  Speaker 3: she Wayne had had this sense of being so unlocked,
• 16:39
  Speaker 3: you know, so totally anything is possible with the sort
• 16:42
  Speaker 3: of inner logic of a child and a total connection
• 16:46
  Speaker 3: between intuition and craft. And I think Jonie obviously came
• 16:51
  Speaker 3: up in that in that same era. It's the same
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: as you know, John Martin and the rest of them
• 16:54
  Speaker 3: in the sort of late sixties as a as a
• 16:56
  Speaker 3: folk sort of song stress. But I think her real
• 16:59
  Speaker 3: calling was, I would say it was to be a
• 17:01
  Speaker 3: jazz musician. And it was really really exciting to get
• 17:04
  Speaker 3: to provoke her I would say musically and see her respond,
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: you know, because every time she'd sing a song in
• 17:10
  Speaker 3: rhearse flavor, it's come out totally different, which is very
• 17:12
  Speaker 3: much like my wheelhouse. So it was fun to get
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: to adapt my language around her creative decisions and watch
• 17:19
  Speaker 3: her sparkle and yeah, just sort of get her to
• 17:22
  Speaker 3: react in different ways through things I would say, and
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: do you know it was it was a really really
• 17:27
  Speaker 3: profound experience for me.
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: We'll be back with more from Jacob Collier after the break.
• 17:35
  Speaker 5: I heard a lot of Joni Mitchell early Joni Mitchell
• 17:39
  Speaker 5: in I think a beautiful song on your album, I
• 17:41
  Speaker 5: know a little oh, And I don't know if that
• 17:43
  Speaker 5: was directly inspired or it just it has that flavor
• 17:46
  Speaker 5: to me.
• 17:47
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, that's very kind of you to say. Unavoidably,
• 17:50
  Speaker 3: I was inspired by Joni at every turn with this record. Yeah,
• 17:54
  Speaker 3: that that's one of those songs that's very much built
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: out of this figure. It's just a very simple figure
• 17:58
  Speaker 3: that kind of goes round and round. And you've got
• 18:01
  Speaker 3: card one and card four mostly. Can you imagine me
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: Jacob Collier saying that I wrote a song with those
• 18:06
  Speaker 3: two cools, But but Joni also had this way of
• 18:10
  Speaker 3: writing songs with one or two chords. But then there'll
• 18:12
  Speaker 3: be these these moments of color, these beautiful kind of
• 18:15
  Speaker 3: explosions of sound. And in the bridge of that song,
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: I throw a couple of other more chromatic moments in.
• 18:21
  Speaker 3: And I think that I think Joining made that possible
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: for all of us. I think she it was her
• 18:25
  Speaker 3: kind of tenacity and taste that provided a sense that
• 18:29
  Speaker 3: as a musician or as a songwriter, as a guitar player,
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: you can you can totally go into that zone without
• 18:33
  Speaker 3: losing the grounding of your song and without it becoming
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: too cerebral.
• 18:37
  Speaker 5: Can you show me the transition?
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: Yes, I absolutely can, so if I tune so two
• 18:46
  Speaker 3: tunings for this guitar, one being this, the other being
• 18:56
  Speaker 3: this where you put a fifth at the top and
• 18:59
  Speaker 3: stead of a fourth, which kind of puts you in
• 19:01
  Speaker 3: this key, so that so this song goes at this.
• 19:10
  Speaker 6: Mm hmm. I remember ber the field, I remember by
• 19:20
  Speaker 6: the taste of you, A little shadows car of the sea.
• 19:32
  Speaker 6: Suddenly I believe bela a little I rememberer the world,
• 19:44
  Speaker 6: watching all of my walls, card a little more, leading
• 19:55
  Speaker 6: it all for letting it gold all.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: I know, So that figure for the verse is really simple, right,
• 20:21
  Speaker 3: and then took chord four and back to card one.
• 20:23
  Speaker 3: So that's that's all one and good. And then this
• 20:25
  Speaker 3: this kind of bridge moment.
• 20:28
  Speaker 6: There's no just.
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: A moment of color, moment of chromaticism, which just kind
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: of takes you out of the reverie for a for
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: a second, but in a sort of non disruptive way.
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: So it just it just kind of wakes up your
• 20:46
  Speaker 3: ear and and reminds you of the other possibilities that
• 20:49
  Speaker 3: are close at hand around the key. But but I
• 20:52
  Speaker 3: think that the the melody of the song. Another lesson
• 20:55
  Speaker 3: I think I learn from jony and others is that
• 20:57
  Speaker 3: the melody of the song grounds you in the key.
• 20:59
  Speaker 3: That the melody doesn't doesn't doesn't kind of pander to
• 21:03
  Speaker 3: the chromaticism. The melody just stays right where it is.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: It goes. So the melody is at home and there
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: is no keep it. But the chords beneath are giving
• 21:15
  Speaker 3: you that context that the spicyinist that sort of provides
• 21:19
  Speaker 3: that stuff. So you know, I think of I think
• 21:20
  Speaker 3: of jony and and all those moments where she would
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: just throw something in that was just slightly odd or
• 21:26
  Speaker 3: something unconventional and provide that sense of spark.
• 21:29
  Speaker 5: You know. Now, one difference between you and Joni Mitchell
• 21:34
  Speaker 5: is that she didn't often know what notes she was playing.
• 21:36
  Speaker 5: She would devise these tunings and just play them. You,
• 21:42
  Speaker 5: of course, are maybe the world's most famous music theory nerd.
• 21:46
  Speaker 5: Maybe so when you are playing, do you know every
• 21:48
  Speaker 5: note you're playing or so? Or do you ever have
• 21:52
  Speaker 5: because so much of guitar playing. For example, you you
• 21:57
  Speaker 5: you cover a James Taylor song. James Taylor has a
• 22:00
  Speaker 5: couple of moves.
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: You know.
• 22:01
  Speaker 5: This is the suspended two up to the three. It's
• 22:05
  Speaker 5: almost all. It's a song that almost comes out of
• 22:07
  Speaker 5: physically playing the guitar.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: Yeah.
• 22:09
  Speaker 5: Yeah, you wouldn't even have to know the theory just
• 22:11
  Speaker 5: to know that. Are you always conscious of the theory
• 22:14
  Speaker 5: when you're playing? Or sometimes does your hand just go
• 22:17
  Speaker 5: somewhere and then maybe you figure it out later?
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: Oh totally. I think that those are some of the
• 22:20
  Speaker 3: most interesting moments when your hand finds the solution. I
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: would say, despite my kind of love of musical theory,
• 22:28
  Speaker 3: musical the kind of science behind what makes it work,
• 22:31
  Speaker 3: I never create in a theoretical way I'm never sitting
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: there thinking right, well, seeing I'm in the GB flat,
• 22:36
  Speaker 3: I think that the note G sharp would be appropriate
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: because of the relationship. I'm never thinking like that. What
• 22:41
  Speaker 3: I know, I think, maybe similar to other guitar players,
• 22:43
  Speaker 3: is I know I know the shapes I like, but
• 22:46
  Speaker 3: my shapes come from off and come from instruments that
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: aren't the guitar. So I think that you know, a
• 22:51
  Speaker 3: move like this is something I know about emotionally, like
• 22:57
  Speaker 3: I understand the effect that chromaticism is going to have
• 23:00
  Speaker 3: on the harmony, but I'm not thinking of it. I
• 23:03
  Speaker 3: could if I wanted to define it as right, or
• 23:05
  Speaker 3: that's a sharp five move going to the thing, or
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: it's modulation to this, but it doesn't help me as
• 23:11
  Speaker 3: a songwriter to do so. Most of the time, I
• 23:14
  Speaker 3: think having the command over that language helps when you're
• 23:17
  Speaker 3: communicating to other musicians what you want. So if I'm
• 23:20
  Speaker 3: arranging for orchestra, for example, or I'm writing something for
• 23:24
  Speaker 3: my band to play or a group of singers to sing,
• 23:26
  Speaker 3: and I'm able to write out the notes that I'm
• 23:28
  Speaker 3: hearing and kind of define to them why certain notes
• 23:31
  Speaker 3: in certain chords kind of make you feel a particular
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: thing that's helpful for me as a band leader and
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: as a ranger and as a producer. But I think
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: as a songwriter, I don't speak. I'm not speaking in
• 23:43
  Speaker 3: my own mind using that language unless I need to
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: for any particular reason, in the same way that when
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: I'm speaking right now, I'm not thinking, Oh, there goes
• 23:51
  Speaker 3: the verb, and oh that's the adjective, and let's make
• 23:53
  Speaker 3: sure the noun is at the end of the you know.
• 23:55
  Speaker 3: But I've absorbed these kind of rules from having spoken
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: a lot as a child and be surrounded by masters
• 24:01
  Speaker 3: of speech as a child, you know, like the same
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: as you. So I think with music it's the same
• 24:05
  Speaker 3: with me. I can put that hat on if I
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: need to, But overarching, I mostly am moving just through
• 24:11
  Speaker 3: kind of association and feeling and thinking, Oh, I do
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: like that as a sense, And I spent a lot
• 24:17
  Speaker 3: of my teenage yers trying to find chords that I
• 24:19
  Speaker 3: had no idea what they were because they excited me
• 24:21
  Speaker 3: so much. And but then once those cars become part
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: of your repertoire, then then your kind of repertoire grows.
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: But I would still call it a non theoretical songwriting experience.
• 24:31
  Speaker 5: You throw in a couple of chords in the James
• 24:34
  Speaker 5: Taylor piece, I mentioned there's a and I tried to
• 24:37
  Speaker 5: pick it out and I got.
• 24:38
  Speaker 3: A flat major. I think I know the moment that
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: it is.
• 24:42
  Speaker 5: It like, is it a I'm going to get this wrong.
• 24:43
  Speaker 5: Was it a tritone at that point or it's.
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: Well, it's half of a tritone, which is a minor third,
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: but it has a similar sense about it. It's like
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: a like one of my favorite things to do, besides
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: tune my own guitar, it's to do what we what
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: we call pivoting, and pivoting is not really a musical thing.
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: It's like a it's it's a human thing. We understand
• 25:06
  Speaker 3: the feeling of putting your your weight or your gravity
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: a particular point and moving your weight from one place
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: to another. So if I take if I'm standing in
• 25:13
  Speaker 3: one place and I stand on one foot and I
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: pivot from that foot to standing in another place, then
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: I've kind of guided my body through that through that
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: experience in a controlled way. So with with with James Taylor,
• 25:27
  Speaker 3: h I mean, this song really is one of the
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: greatest songs of all time. The sun is slowly see.
• 25:39
  Speaker 7: So rising.
• 25:44
  Speaker 6: From this all around and Nashti.
• 25:53
  Speaker 3: And I think what I did was something like, so.
• 25:57
  Speaker 4: Closer eyes, you can close your rights.
• 26:02
  Speaker 6: It's all right.
• 26:06
  Speaker 8: I don't know love song es. I can't sing the
• 26:11
  Speaker 8: booze and I can sing this song.
• 26:20
  Speaker 4: You can sing this song when I'm gone. That was
• 26:26
  Speaker 4: the moment somewhere else.
• 26:28
  Speaker 3: But that note works in discord, but it also works
• 26:32
  Speaker 3: in this chord as well, right, So that's been my pivot.
• 26:38
  Speaker 7: You can sing this song.
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: I could go when and or I could go when
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: I go and then I go back to but I
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: can sing this. So it's just a little like a
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: window of color opens. It's like, oh, I knew world
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: just for a moment.
• 26:54
  Speaker 5: It's such a nice moment because it follows what makes
• 26:58
  Speaker 5: that song distinct in the harmony, which is when it
• 27:01
  Speaker 5: goes to the flat seven.
• 27:04
  Speaker 3: Yes, which is such a James Taylor move.
• 27:06
  Speaker 5: Right, But it's so beautiful in that song. And then
• 27:08
  Speaker 5: this just took it off, and I think you do
• 27:10
  Speaker 5: it before the solo and it.
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: Just absolutely right.
• 27:12
  Speaker 5: It just takes it just goes into space.
• 27:14
  Speaker 3: You're right on the thing I love about about James
• 27:16
  Speaker 3: Taylor is he has this way of he'll often kind
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: of reassert his position in a key using what we
• 27:24
  Speaker 3: call as musicians a plaguel cadence. So it's like, that's
• 27:29
  Speaker 3: what we'll do. It's like saying, Okay, I'm an F
• 27:33
  Speaker 3: and then I'm going to go, which kind of means
• 27:36
  Speaker 3: it's like B flat. Fan's like, I'm really home, I'm
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: really home.
• 27:38
  Speaker 6: I'm really home.
• 27:38
  Speaker 3: And he does a thing called a plague on plaguel
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: cadence where he'll go, he'll be, he'll be in one
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: key and then he'll go into another key, and then
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: he'll do a play.
• 27:49
  Speaker 6: In that key.
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: And it's a really comforting kind of harmonic instinct that
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: he has and I really enjoy it. But what plagueal
• 27:55
  Speaker 3: cadences do is they move you to into the darker
• 27:58
  Speaker 3: side of a key. It moves it and moves you
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: into into the flat side of a key, which you're
• 28:02
  Speaker 3: kind of going into the yeah, into the into the
• 28:06
  Speaker 3: dark side, onto the flat side as opposed to right.
• 28:12
  Speaker 3: That will be like the brighter side. You can go
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: bright forever in that direction around what we call the
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: circle of fifths, or you.
• 28:18
  Speaker 4: Can go.
• 28:20
  Speaker 3: Darker and darker and it gets like into the deeper
• 28:23
  Speaker 3: news of the key. So one of the reasons why
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: you can say this where gone is surprising is because
• 28:31
  Speaker 3: that is a really bright chord in comparison to F anyway,
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: but especially given the context of all the plagual cadences,
• 28:37
  Speaker 3: which is like dark thing darkening, it's like even more
• 28:39
  Speaker 3: of a statement to say, oh, I'm going to go here,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: and suddenly it's we're in this other key. I think
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: I'm playing this now in F on the album, I
• 28:46
  Speaker 3: think it's an F sharp, but in this context it's
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: a D D major, which is like full full of light,
• 28:51
  Speaker 3: you know, in comparison to to the F. But then,
• 28:55
  Speaker 3: but then some of these other James Taylory areas are
• 28:58
  Speaker 3: much darker. And again I can describe these things in
• 29:02
  Speaker 3: theoretical terms, but but foundationally these are just like sensations
• 29:05
  Speaker 3: that are familiar to me. And I think probably too
• 29:07
  Speaker 3: many of you too, who are listen and who love
• 29:09
  Speaker 3: listening to music, is that you have you're affected by
• 29:11
  Speaker 3: the harmonic relationships. My kind of fascination and job as
• 29:15
  Speaker 3: a musician and an arranger and harmonist is to try
• 29:19
  Speaker 3: and understand the impact that some of these things can
• 29:21
  Speaker 3: have on my songs and my choices that I can
• 29:23
  Speaker 3: control those moments of contrast or okay, a little bit
• 29:27
  Speaker 3: of sunlight here, or let's make some fog, or let's
• 29:29
  Speaker 3: let's make this feel heavy, or make this feel light
• 29:31
  Speaker 3: or and I love playing with all those sensations.
• 29:34
  Speaker 5: It's funny you describe it as going a little dark
• 29:37
  Speaker 5: with the with the playable cadence, because when I hear it,
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: even in James Taylor, to me, it sounds like that's
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: a gospel move It is very much a gospelways going.
• 29:45
  Speaker 5: You know, if you think of the beginning of Aretha
• 29:51
  Speaker 5: Franklin's You Make Me Feel like a Natural woman, that's piano.
• 29:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 29:58
  Speaker 5: And it's also I found and I'm not sure if
• 30:01
  Speaker 5: this was deliberate or if this again comes out of
• 30:04
  Speaker 5: playing and a guitar. A lot of drone sounds in
• 30:06
  Speaker 5: this on this it's something you don't do as much
• 30:09
  Speaker 5: on the piano.
• 30:10
  Speaker 3: It's true. I think the guitar has that beautiful way
• 30:14
  Speaker 3: of offering, like if you leave two strings going throughout
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: your song, which I tend to do. I tend to
• 30:19
  Speaker 3: play mostly on this guitar using the lower three strings,
• 30:22
  Speaker 3: and these kind of just go these estate they're there
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: so there's an automatic sense that there's a drone, which
• 30:32
  Speaker 3: I've always loved drones so much. On the piano, it's
• 30:35
  Speaker 3: it's harder to have these things ringing efforts. You'd have
• 30:37
  Speaker 3: to play those notes again and again on a piano
• 30:39
  Speaker 3: and orders to get that that same effect. But I
• 30:41
  Speaker 3: think that the drone sense kind of grounds the sound
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: of the guitar and being quite similar to an open
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: tuning guitar anyway, and really being an open tuning guitar.
• 30:51
  Speaker 3: Many people who play with open tunings, I think, also
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: feel drones are of significance. I think Joni would be one.
• 30:58
  Speaker 3: You know that just having having those certain notes that
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: could keep going through the cars and other notes that
• 31:03
  Speaker 3: change is a really beautiful way of making comonic contrast interesting.
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: M hm.
• 31:07
  Speaker 5: So we know a change your writing style. Did it
• 31:11
  Speaker 5: change your singing?
• 31:13
  Speaker 3: Yeah? I would say the thing that foundationally affected my
• 31:17
  Speaker 3: style of singing with this album more than anything else
• 31:19
  Speaker 3: besides just the fact that it was there was a guitar,
• 31:20
  Speaker 3: was actually the the style of recording with these full takes,
• 31:24
  Speaker 3: because I think that you know, if I if I
• 31:27
  Speaker 3: record my voice as many of us do in isolation,
• 31:29
  Speaker 3: you know, you go into the quote unquote vocal booth.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: Having recorded the basis of your song and you do
• 31:34
  Speaker 3: a performance of the song, you're not necessarily at one
• 31:38
  Speaker 3: with any of the elements in terms of of a
• 31:40
  Speaker 3: of a performance aspect. You're you're reacting, and so you're
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: attached in that way, but you're not you're there's there's
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: not that sense of dualism. So so here if I
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: if I sing and play the guitar at the same time,
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: because I'm one person, my phrasing will move along with
• 31:57
  Speaker 3: my instrument. My dynamics will be in line with my instrument.
• 32:01
  Speaker 3: I will naturally kind of create a sense of conversation.
• 32:05
  Speaker 3: You know, Son is saying, what happens is between my
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: vocal phrases, the guitar will kind of rise up like
• 32:18
  Speaker 3: a wave, and then it will rescind a little bit
• 32:20
  Speaker 3: when I sing, and then it will fill in the gap.
• 32:22
  Speaker 3: So that the dynamics I think of my singing were
• 32:25
  Speaker 3: really inspired by and informed by the way I play
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: the guitar, and vice versa. I think the guitar was
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: inspired by the by the voice as well. I think
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: in general, as a multi instrumentalist and enthusiastic of instruments
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: in general. I think that instruments are at the best
• 32:42
  Speaker 3: when they feel like voices in general. You know, it's
• 32:44
  Speaker 3: no wonder that we we bend our strings, or we
• 32:48
  Speaker 3: we we add vibrato on violins, or you know, across
• 32:53
  Speaker 3: the gamut. That's there's the sense that instruments have a
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: variety of ways of imitating the voice essentially. And yeah,
• 32:59
  Speaker 3: I think as a guitar player, I can't try and
• 33:01
  Speaker 3: play like I'm singing, even if I'm playing a chord.
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: You can, you can kind of stroke a chord, or
• 33:06
  Speaker 3: you can it's like you breathe, you know, it's like
• 33:11
  Speaker 3: the way that the voice does. I think that the
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: least interesting kind of guitar players, I know, play the
• 33:15
  Speaker 3: guitar like it's like it's a guitar, if that makes sense.
• 33:20
  Speaker 5: You're bringing up an interesting idea, which is modern recording
• 33:24
  Speaker 5: now is you record everything separately, and even folk artists
• 33:29
  Speaker 5: now I'm sure you do.
• 33:29
  Speaker 3: A guitar is separately, yeah, isolation.
• 33:34
  Speaker 5: But then you lose some of that interplay between the instruments.
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 33:39
  Speaker 5: The other thing that's happened to recording is everything is
• 33:41
  Speaker 5: now on a grid. So when you're talking about the swells.
• 33:44
  Speaker 5: You're also changing the tempo, which is something you don't
• 33:47
  Speaker 5: hear a lot in modern music.
• 33:48
  Speaker 3: It's true, you know, it's such a good point you make.
• 33:50
  Speaker 3: I take for granted that I don't play in time
• 33:53
  Speaker 3: a lot of the time, but I think, you know,
• 33:55
  Speaker 3: oftentimes the way our psychologies are are kind of illustrated
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: now in terms of like a canvas or a workflow
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: is if you look at a computer and you're running
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: a daw audio software, you see grits constantly. There were
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: think only two songs out of the eleven on this
• 34:10
  Speaker 3: album that I recorded to a grid. Everything else is
• 34:13
  Speaker 3: totally whimsical in terms of time, which I really enjoy.
• 34:18
  Speaker 3: It's funny. I've always kind of felt comfortable going off
• 34:21
  Speaker 3: the grid, especially with recording, and the thing that really
• 34:23
  Speaker 3: taught me how to do it well was back in
• 34:26
  Speaker 3: twenty sixteen when I released my debut album in My
• 34:28
  Speaker 3: Room with the way that I funded that album and
• 34:31
  Speaker 3: I built the campaign was through a service called Patreon.
• 34:35
  Speaker 3: It's like one of the craphnic websites that I'm sure
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: you know. And I decided to launch a campaign where
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: I would harmonize my fans, harmonize my Oudence member. So
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: I asked people to send me fifteen second snippets of
• 34:45
  Speaker 3: any melody in any language of their choosing. Some some of
• 34:48
  Speaker 3: them wrote new melodies, some of them sang songs I knew,
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: and I would kind of send it back to them harmonized,
• 34:54
  Speaker 3: and I would film myself singing the parts and I
• 34:56
  Speaker 3: would upload them as videos, and I did about one
• 34:59
  Speaker 3: hundred in the end, and it really it was a
• 35:01
  Speaker 3: really fun way of building an audience online in those
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: early days. And to me, it was like I had
• 35:06
  Speaker 3: to get really good at harmonizing quickly because I'd received
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: so many different submissions, and that process it was like
• 35:13
  Speaker 3: solving Sudoku's you know. It's like someone would send melody
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: that goes, you know, whatever the melody was, and I
• 35:20
  Speaker 3: would I would find a solution for it harmonically that
• 35:22
  Speaker 3: felt just like ticklish and fun and made the person
• 35:25
  Speaker 3: sound really good. But no one was seeing young Grid,
• 35:28
  Speaker 3: so I had to create ways of making somebody's time
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: make sense without imposing anything on them. You know, I
• 35:36
  Speaker 3: had melodies from like two year old kids, you know,
• 35:39
  Speaker 3: super microtonal as I'm sure was not their intention, But
• 35:43
  Speaker 3: there's this one girl, so she's saying, like.
• 35:45
  Speaker 6: Tweet good, tweet, golys, you.
• 35:49
  Speaker 3: Know, and my job is not to change anything about
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: the melody all the time. But so I modulated around
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: her using all these microtonal chords to make her sound incredible,
• 36:01
  Speaker 3: you know. And it was a really fun, like philosophical
• 36:03
  Speaker 3: musical excise for me. But I think that one of
• 36:05
  Speaker 3: the biggest things it taught me, especially with you know,
• 36:07
  Speaker 3: accompanying musicians would play things in time, was how you
• 36:11
  Speaker 3: can make you can kind of make someone sound good
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: by following their time rather than imposing any kind of grid.
• 36:17
  Speaker 3: It wouldn't have worked if I tried to impose a grid.
• 36:19
  Speaker 3: So weirdly, I learned a lot of lessons from that
• 36:22
  Speaker 3: process that I applied to this album, because I think
• 36:24
  Speaker 3: with this album, I was kind of harmonizing myself in
• 36:28
  Speaker 3: the sense that I'd record a full length take a recording,
• 36:32
  Speaker 3: and then I would begin the process of in so
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: much as it was necessary, adding that context or decoration
• 36:37
  Speaker 3: or you know, just sort of like a yeah, elements
• 36:41
  Speaker 3: to make that performance shine. And for certain songs, like
• 36:45
  Speaker 3: there's one song called called Icarus, which is by a
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: group called The Stage, which I just love so much.
• 36:50
  Speaker 3: The song that is primarily just completely me doing it live.
• 36:54
  Speaker 3: Same with a song called Norwegian Would, which I recorded.
• 36:57
  Speaker 3: It's fundamentally just that live performance of me playing the song.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: And then other songs like the Beach Boys, Keeping on Summer,
• 37:03
  Speaker 3: some of my own songs like Heaven Butterflies, and I
• 37:05
  Speaker 3: know a little some of these things have a little
• 37:07
  Speaker 3: bit more of that layering effect. But I love the
• 37:10
  Speaker 3: challenge of following something that feels natural and organic and
• 37:13
  Speaker 3: alive without trying to. In music, we say the world
• 37:16
  Speaker 3: quantize it, you know, so of lock it to a grid,
• 37:19
  Speaker 3: make it rigid in terms of rhythm, but all some
• 37:21
  Speaker 3: terms of tuning. In terms of sound, I love all
• 37:24
  Speaker 3: that sqriggly imperfection.
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: Norwegian wood is interesting because because there's always a debate
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: about whether Norwegian woods in three four times or six eight?
• 37:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 37:35
  Speaker 5: Yeah, And you do something. First of all, you're making
• 37:38
  Speaker 5: a sound that sounds like you're you're striking above the net.
• 37:43
  Speaker 3: Is that true?
• 37:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah?
• 37:44
  Speaker 3: This thing I did do that. Okay, So I a
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: little fire, that's one thing. But that rhythm rhythm for that, yeah, again,
• 38:00
  Speaker 3: it's that drone thing. And I love I love the
• 38:04
  Speaker 3: palmuting sound in general, but what you're hearing a lot
• 38:07
  Speaker 3: is me hammering on with my left hand and these
• 38:11
  Speaker 3: little baby kind of like strings. And I love it
• 38:16
  Speaker 3: because it feels, again, it doesn't feel like a guitar.
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: It doesn't feel like I'm hey, you know, I'm not.
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: It's like.
• 38:24
  Speaker 3: It's like partly percussion, partly partly drum, partly kind of drone,
• 38:29
  Speaker 3: and it's there's something almost like like a climber about it,
• 38:32
  Speaker 3: like some piano about it's really kind of groovy.
• 38:35
  Speaker 5: It sounds a little and I know it's not. It
• 38:37
  Speaker 5: sounds a little busting over almost.
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, the first part somewhat yeah, somewhat yeah.
• 38:42
  Speaker 5: But then the chorus you're just playing, yeah.
• 38:46
  Speaker 3: That's more.
• 38:47
  Speaker 6: Yeah.
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: But I love how I mean. One of the things
• 38:52
  Speaker 3: about this guitar I love is that it has a
• 38:53
  Speaker 3: six string neck but only five strings, so there's much
• 38:55
  Speaker 3: more space between the strings to just kind of find
• 38:58
  Speaker 3: these sounds. And somehow it's it's it's it's like an
• 39:03
  Speaker 3: an appealing system for me to to find these these
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: kind of ticklish, little little pockets. In this song. I
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: also bend do a lot of string bending, which again
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: is possible because of the space between the strings, but
• 39:17
  Speaker 3: you know. Yeah, for this particular song, the time is
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: constantly shifting slightly because it's all live. But I focused
• 39:23
  Speaker 3: on the fact that this was just me doing a
• 39:25
  Speaker 3: take and singing the song, and only the very last
• 39:27
  Speaker 3: minute that I had a couple of little moments of
• 39:29
  Speaker 3: decoration here and there.
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: Well, LA's break and we'll be back with Jacob Collier.
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: Now.
• 39:39
  Speaker 5: Probably the most produced song is your Beach Boy cover
• 39:42
  Speaker 5: of keep an Eye in Summer. Yeah, not their best
• 39:44
  Speaker 5: known song, No tremendous song.
• 39:46
  Speaker 3: I love that song.
• 39:47
  Speaker 5: What inspired you to do that song?
• 39:49
  Speaker 3: You know? This was one of the things that I
• 39:51
  Speaker 3: had before the four day window began. I'd recorded a
• 39:55
  Speaker 3: rendition of this song summer of twenty twenty four. She
• 39:58
  Speaker 3: was on Midsummer's Day and it was one of those
• 40:00
  Speaker 3: rare days that I'm sure many of you will know,
• 40:03
  Speaker 3: where you you know, your life's been full, and you've
• 40:06
  Speaker 3: been busy and things have been going on, but you
• 40:09
  Speaker 3: just find yourself at the weekend home, you got half
• 40:13
  Speaker 3: the noon ahead of it. You think, oh, what should
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: I do? I've just I found myself, you know, a
• 40:17
  Speaker 3: Lauren to myself, and so I thought, well, maybe I
• 40:19
  Speaker 3: should just record keep an arm Summer because it was
• 40:22
  Speaker 3: a song I've been sort of jamming on for a
• 40:23
  Speaker 3: bit and playing, and I just got my my ten
• 40:26
  Speaker 3: string guitar, which was a brand new kind of angle
• 40:29
  Speaker 3: on the fire string. It's just the twelve string equivalent
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: of the fire string. And so I sat down and
• 40:36
  Speaker 3: I took me about three four hours and I recorded
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: this quite scrappy arrangement of it with all these different
• 40:41
  Speaker 3: layers and things, and that that arrangement of the song
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: existing actually was quite a big part of the inspirations
• 40:48
  Speaker 3: to make this album at all, because I when I
• 40:51
  Speaker 3: sat down in May to do this record, I thought, well,
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: what do I have that I could work with it?
• 40:54
  Speaker 3: It's like, well, I have that arrangement of keeping on Summer,
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: maybe I could build a whole record around that world,
• 40:58
  Speaker 3: because it it's a musical world I really love, and
• 41:01
  Speaker 3: a sort of sonority of a particular area of my
• 41:03
  Speaker 3: taste that I've really wanted to explore and go deep
• 41:06
  Speaker 3: intofferent ages and sorry, what is that?
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: What is that a that you liked?
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: I think it's a combination of the sound of the
• 41:12
  Speaker 3: guitar mixed with a sort of stripped back approach. There's
• 41:17
  Speaker 3: also with Keeping On Summer. A microphone that I use
• 41:20
  Speaker 3: called an R a T eight ribbon mic which has
• 41:22
  Speaker 3: that really nice hiss like to everything, so when you
• 41:25
  Speaker 3: record something on it, it feels really kind of feels analog,
• 41:28
  Speaker 3: feels a life, feels like warm and rich. So there's
• 41:31
  Speaker 3: something about that, the word that which is part a
• 41:34
  Speaker 3: big part of this world, which for me made a
• 41:35
  Speaker 3: big impact, and I used it on Keeping on Summer.
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: It's one of the first times I'd ever recorded using it,
• 41:42
  Speaker 3: and so I got really excited by this hissy warm world.
• 41:46
  Speaker 3: I'd explored it a little bit with Jesse Volume two
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: back in the day, but yeah, there's there's something about
• 41:53
  Speaker 3: the the acoustic guitar meets vocal harmony world that inspired me.
• 41:57
  Speaker 3: And obviously the king of vocal harmony and songwriting to
• 42:00
  Speaker 3: me is Brian has always been Brian. So to cover
• 42:03
  Speaker 3: that song Keeping On Summer felt like a really nice
• 42:04
  Speaker 3: sort of homage to the great man. And we obviously
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: lost Brian this year, so it just like I renae
• 42:09
  Speaker 3: to share that arrangement with the world as just a
• 42:12
  Speaker 3: sort of really warm, sunlit, gladeful afternoon in England, thinking oh,
• 42:17
  Speaker 3: maybe I can do a rendition of the song that
• 42:18
  Speaker 3: I really love and yes, not not one of his
• 42:20
  Speaker 3: big hits, but a beautiful modulation in that in that
• 42:22
  Speaker 3: bridge there.
• 42:23
  Speaker 5: M h, absolutely it goes up. I can't remember the chords.
• 42:27
  Speaker 3: Exactly, major third or something on my third.
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: Did you get a chance to meet him?
• 42:33
  Speaker 3: Sorry, I never did get a chance to me, Brian,
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: and he, like Joni, was one of these people who
• 42:41
  Speaker 3: sits in a total on a throne in my head,
• 42:44
  Speaker 3: someone who like I never felt the need to to
• 42:47
  Speaker 3: meet him for any I have enough of a feast
• 42:50
  Speaker 3: of inspiration just from his work. But I did see
• 42:52
  Speaker 3: him play once and it was it was unbelievable funny.
• 42:56
  Speaker 5: When you talk about this album, it was about restricting choices,
• 42:59
  Speaker 5: or at least putting some of your palette away, which
• 43:03
  Speaker 5: is you know, famously, he's the guy that was almost
• 43:05
  Speaker 5: driven crazy by the number of choices he could make it.
• 43:09
  Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. I mean, here's a guy who embraced the
• 43:14
  Speaker 3: fireman's bells and the timpany and the swanny whistle and
• 43:18
  Speaker 3: the and the there men, of course, and it's it's
• 43:21
  Speaker 3: to me. It gave me so much permission as a
• 43:23
  Speaker 3: kid to play and to explore these big words, but
• 43:27
  Speaker 3: I also love that. I think it's a bootleg album
• 43:30
  Speaker 3: that Brian put out or was put out of just
• 43:33
  Speaker 3: Brian playing songs on the piano. It might be called
• 43:35
  Speaker 3: like Brian at the Piano or something like that, and
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: he just plays these songs at the piano, and you
• 43:38
  Speaker 3: recognize with Brian how strong the songs are, because when
• 43:41
  Speaker 3: you take away all the swanny whistles and the craziness
• 43:44
  Speaker 3: of the sandwich I love so much, you're left with
• 43:47
  Speaker 3: a really beautiful song. And so yeah, for me, that
• 43:49
  Speaker 3: was so inspiring and still so inspiring to me as
• 43:51
  Speaker 3: a as a Songwriter's like, how can you make something
• 43:53
  Speaker 3: that both works in a totally acoustic strip back scenario
• 43:57
  Speaker 3: and also works when you scale all those layers on
• 44:01
  Speaker 3: top of other layers, and you know, you have a
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: song like good Vibrations, which I think I look back
• 44:07
  Speaker 3: at that at the first time I heard that song
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: and it was just like the whole, this whole new
• 44:11
  Speaker 3: faction of creativity became available to me. It's like I
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: didn't I just didn't know you could do that. But
• 44:16
  Speaker 3: when Brian saits to the piano plays the song, it
• 44:17
  Speaker 3: sounds great too, you know, and That's why I love
• 44:19
  Speaker 3: about Brian and love about those songs.
• 44:21
  Speaker 5: I want to talk about a couple more of your influences,
• 44:23
  Speaker 5: how they may or may not have found their way
• 44:26
  Speaker 5: into this album.
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: Yeah, you grew up in a musical.
• 44:28
  Speaker 5: Family, and you said you sang bar corrals.
• 44:31
  Speaker 3: I did what we did. Did you sing by the way, Well,
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: I was the bass, so I would and i'd often
• 44:37
  Speaker 3: I'd often add notes in or imparize things around those,
• 44:40
  Speaker 3: around those those things. I always have to have a
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: pencil handy and would be, you know, jotting notes in
• 44:45
  Speaker 3: and things, just like learning what I liked and what
• 44:47
  Speaker 3: I and what I responded to. But yeah, so I
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: was brought up by a single mom. I'm the eldest
• 44:52
  Speaker 3: of three kids. So we were s a TV, you know,
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: and my mum sings ten that kind of Shekina goes
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: ah and he kind of comes out with these tenor lines.
• 44:59
  Speaker 3: But I really loved I love that feeling. I still
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: love that feeling now of sitting with those those lovely
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: people and just singing together. And actually is what Brian
• 45:07
  Speaker 3: used to do too, used to sing with his brothers.
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: He used to transcribe four Freshman arrangements and they'd sing
• 45:11
  Speaker 3: it all together as a group. And I think he
• 45:14
  Speaker 3: did a lot of his process of studying and expanding
• 45:17
  Speaker 3: his kind of harmonic palette through learning these arrangements and
• 45:20
  Speaker 3: teaching these parts to his brothers. And I love the
• 45:23
  Speaker 3: thought that, yeah, he did that and then went on
• 45:25
  Speaker 3: to write songs like you know, Surfer Girl or whatever,
• 45:28
  Speaker 3: and outcome all these four freshman voice things. But in
• 45:30
  Speaker 3: the context of a surf rock song, it's amazing.
• 45:35
  Speaker 5: Now are there points where we're hearing a little Bak
• 45:38
  Speaker 5: in any of the songs on this album?
• 45:40
  Speaker 3: It's a good question. I find him unavoidably inspiring, and
• 45:44
  Speaker 3: he shows up in all sorts of places. I think
• 45:46
  Speaker 3: there are certain moments. There's a song called Where Did
• 45:48
  Speaker 3: My Apple Fall on the album, which is really it's
• 45:51
  Speaker 3: quite an austere to. It's quite a strange song. I
• 45:53
  Speaker 3: really love it a lot. One of the songs one
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: of those song seeds that I had that I didn't
• 45:59
  Speaker 3: know what to do with that because it didn't feel
• 46:00
  Speaker 3: like it fit on any of the Jesse albums, and
• 46:02
  Speaker 3: it didn't really have it a world that where it belonged,
• 46:05
  Speaker 3: and I was so excited to get to release it,
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: but it's quite it's amos quite classic in terms of
• 46:09
  Speaker 3: the harmony, this three part harmony that that moves I
• 46:14
  Speaker 3: think in a way that hopefully Bark may may approve of.
• 46:17
  Speaker 3: There's another song on the album called tom Thumb, which
• 46:19
  Speaker 3: is which is a similar thing, and so it goes
• 46:24
  Speaker 3: Tom Thumb.
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: Goes, light up the stove of your countenance. You're all
• 46:41
  Speaker 4: that matters to me.
• 46:44
  Speaker 6: I am a lake or a stone or an hour glass.
• 46:49
  Speaker 6: I am a joke that is wasted on.
• 46:54
  Speaker 7: Grab me and stoves of your confidence.
• 47:00
  Speaker 3: Render me to tatters.
• 47:01
  Speaker 6: I'm free.
• 47:04
  Speaker 4: I'll be a.
• 47:04
  Speaker 6: Steak or a bone or an oven glove. I'll be
• 47:09
  Speaker 6: the island the drowns in the sea talm thong, Where
• 47:18
  Speaker 6: did you come from?
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: The last soft drown and everything tall thought you were gone?
• 47:32
  Speaker 6: The found inside everything.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: Oh that's the whole song. Miss that's very short for this.
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: What is it?
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: It's very classical and I love I love that influence
• 48:17
  Speaker 3: showing up in songs. You can't plan what inspires you,
• 48:21
  Speaker 3: and when you sit down to write a song, you
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: just your job is to make space for whatever wants
• 48:25
  Speaker 3: to sort of come through. But I think having loved
• 48:28
  Speaker 3: that music for so long, as a kid. It's it's
• 48:30
  Speaker 3: always a surprise and delight but also unsurprising to me
• 48:34
  Speaker 3: to see certain sort of tragic things make their way
• 48:37
  Speaker 3: into songs, And I think, yeah, a progression like that
• 48:40
  Speaker 3: wouldn't exist if it wasn't for that that that influence.
• 48:42
  Speaker 3: So I definitely didn't learn the bulk of my my
• 48:46
  Speaker 3: harmonic understanding or my songwriter style through any kind of
• 48:49
  Speaker 3: jazz harmony. I think I was most inspired and informed
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: by some of the more expensive classical harmony that I
• 48:57
  Speaker 3: loved as as a child, and hearing that find its
• 49:00
  Speaker 3: way into into songs to me that that's that's always
• 49:03
  Speaker 3: a sign that I'm tapped into something real.
• 49:07
  Speaker 5: Here's a trickier one. Benjamin brittin You Love.
• 49:10
  Speaker 3: I adore.
• 49:13
  Speaker 5: Any little any little bits of Benjamin Britain in here, I.
• 49:17
  Speaker 3: Would definitely say so. I think those two songs feel
• 49:22
  Speaker 3: again feel britain Esque in to to the to the
• 49:26
  Speaker 3: point that they are austere. I think of Britain as
• 49:29
  Speaker 3: the master of the austere harmonically, like he he kind
• 49:32
  Speaker 3: of plays what's not the chord rather than just what
• 49:35
  Speaker 3: is the chord. He will leave out a really important
• 49:37
  Speaker 3: note in a chord and make you feel like you're
• 49:41
  Speaker 3: like you have to imagine the note instead, you know.
• 49:44
  Speaker 5: Well, he often inverted chords in the in the base,
• 49:47
  Speaker 5: you'd have a fifth, you'd have.
• 49:49
  Speaker 3: A fifth, or a third, or even a seventh or sixth.
• 49:51
  Speaker 3: That it really had a had a very bold imagination
• 49:53
  Speaker 3: for kind of leaving space in chords and leaving austerity
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: within chords. I think Britain to me, it's hard to
• 50:00
  Speaker 3: point to a particular moment where it's like, oh, there's
• 50:02
  Speaker 3: there's Britain. But I think that the attitude of of
• 50:06
  Speaker 3: a harmonic language that can be yeah, both very warm
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: and reassuring and also austere and rather unpredictable. I think
• 50:14
  Speaker 3: that there's an essence of that which he he was
• 50:17
  Speaker 3: like one of the funding fathers for me as a child,
• 50:18
  Speaker 3: of being harmonically unpredictable in ways that are just disarming,
• 50:22
  Speaker 3: like not just fully fledged and radically dense, but just
• 50:28
  Speaker 3: surprising in these gaunt ways.
• 50:30
  Speaker 5: Yeah, I was watching a video you made. I'm not
• 50:33
  Speaker 5: sure how many years ago you were on Lodger, just
• 50:35
  Speaker 5: showing people how you create vocal effects over I think
• 50:39
  Speaker 5: he used maybe Hay Jude. I can't I can't remember
• 50:44
  Speaker 5: his Hay Jude or sure or something like that. And
• 50:48
  Speaker 5: you were just showing people and you were you were
• 50:50
  Speaker 5: talking about doing this, and this is how you created
• 50:53
  Speaker 5: I think this is where I got your description of
• 50:58
  Speaker 5: decoration over top of the melody, and how impatient you
• 51:01
  Speaker 5: are to get yes yes to that part. I'm glad
• 51:04
  Speaker 5: you've learned patience. But you said something that really struck me.
• 51:09
  Speaker 5: You said, and you were speaking very fast, and you said,
• 51:11
  Speaker 5: you know, this takes a lot of practice, and then
• 51:13
  Speaker 5: you pause and you said and it takes a lot
• 51:15
  Speaker 5: of courage and trust. And those two last words really
• 51:19
  Speaker 5: interested me because not only I mean, I've dealt with
• 51:23
  Speaker 5: writers my whole life. I'm an editor. That's something so
• 51:27
  Speaker 5: many people lack courage and trust. And even musicians we
• 51:34
  Speaker 5: have in here sometimes who've have great accomplishments and are
• 51:38
  Speaker 5: sitting here at some point in their career, don't have
• 51:41
  Speaker 5: that faith in their own work at that moment. I'm
• 51:45
  Speaker 5: interested where you get that.
• 51:47
  Speaker 3: Oh, it's a beautiful question. I think of all the
• 51:52
  Speaker 3: most important things in music, I don't think there musical things.
• 51:56
  Speaker 3: I think that human things. I think courage and trust
• 51:58
  Speaker 3: are too to the central pillars that are somewhat necessary
• 52:03
  Speaker 3: to make a thing a tool. It makes something interesting
• 52:06
  Speaker 3: to me. It's hard to say where where these things
• 52:09
  Speaker 3: come from. I think everyone needs a champion in different ways,
• 52:12
  Speaker 3: in different parts of their journey. Everyone needs a person
• 52:15
  Speaker 3: to reflect them back at themselves in a certain way,
• 52:18
  Speaker 3: in some form and say, hey, this thing that you
• 52:20
  Speaker 3: are doing is interesting to me. I can think of
• 52:23
  Speaker 3: people along my journey, whether it's my mother, whether it's
• 52:26
  Speaker 3: Quincy Jones or Herbie Hancock, or just peers of mine,
• 52:30
  Speaker 3: friends of mine who notice something about what I'm doing
• 52:33
  Speaker 3: in a moment where I don't have that trust and
• 52:34
  Speaker 3: belief and say you Ruin as this is special, you
• 52:36
  Speaker 3: should keep doing that. And I say, oh, really, are
• 52:38
  Speaker 3: you sure? And they say yeah, And there's something about
• 52:42
  Speaker 3: that exchanged that reflection, which I think it really helped
• 52:45
  Speaker 3: me out along my way. I don't know where my
• 52:47
  Speaker 3: audacity comes from quite It probably comes partly from from
• 52:51
  Speaker 3: my mom, it comes partly from my heroes, people I've
• 52:53
  Speaker 3: loved over the years. I think I've always possessed a
• 52:57
  Speaker 3: sort of dogged belief that something is possible, even if
• 53:01
  Speaker 3: it's totally not possible, you know, for example, going to
• 53:03
  Speaker 3: a key that doesn't exist. You know, these kinds of
• 53:05
  Speaker 3: things that I've done in the past. You know, the
• 53:09
  Speaker 3: piano is limited to twelve notes. I've written songs and
• 53:11
  Speaker 3: keys that are beyond those twelve notes. And the only
• 53:14
  Speaker 3: real reason I've done it is because I'm just too
• 53:16
  Speaker 3: interested not to give it a try. I think that
• 53:20
  Speaker 3: every time you take a risk and something interesting happens,
• 53:24
  Speaker 3: you get a little bit of confidence out of that.
• 53:27
  Speaker 3: I think about being on stage over the years, and
• 53:29
  Speaker 3: you know, when I first stepped onto a stage, I
• 53:31
  Speaker 3: you know, I was it was really it's really scary
• 53:33
  Speaker 3: thing to do. You know, you stand in front of
• 53:35
  Speaker 3: a thousand people, or five thousand people, or a hundred people,
• 53:37
  Speaker 3: wherever it is, and you tell your story and everyone's watching,
• 53:41
  Speaker 3: and if you're not used to that as a format,
• 53:44
  Speaker 3: it's it's a really strange thing to do. It's a
• 53:46
  Speaker 3: strange thing to subject yourself to. But what I found
• 53:50
  Speaker 3: is every time I'd take a risk and I'd get
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: a little bit of that reward back, I would I'd
• 53:54
  Speaker 3: gain a little bit more courage for next time. And
• 53:57
  Speaker 3: I think that as one thing went to another, both
• 53:59
  Speaker 3: in the studio and out of the studio I really enjoyed.
• 54:02
  Speaker 3: Just you just have to try stuff out. And you know,
• 54:05
  Speaker 3: the worst thing that can happen in music is that
• 54:06
  Speaker 3: you do something that's just not great. And we've all
• 54:09
  Speaker 3: we've all made things that aren't great, you know. And
• 54:12
  Speaker 3: I think, I think when I'm at my best, when
• 54:13
  Speaker 3: I'm at my most open and free flowing, I'm I'm
• 54:16
  Speaker 3: totally willing to to just let go and see what
• 54:20
  Speaker 3: comes out. And I also know the feeling of of
• 54:22
  Speaker 3: I think, is it all artis who have really doubting,
• 54:25
  Speaker 3: of really doubting the thing I'm making? You know, basically
• 54:27
  Speaker 3: every single thing I make, At a certain point, I'll
• 54:29
  Speaker 3: be like, oh, I don't know about this. I don't know,
• 54:31
  Speaker 3: is this really worth completing? It doesn't feel like it
• 54:33
  Speaker 3: tells the whole story, or it feels like it tells
• 54:36
  Speaker 3: too much of the story, or you know, is this
• 54:39
  Speaker 3: interesting enough? I think it is something I've often come
• 54:40
  Speaker 3: up against myself, or or is this is this too much?
• 54:44
  Speaker 3: You know? Have I have I gone too far? There
• 54:47
  Speaker 3: aren't really any guidelines around this stuff, Like, there are
• 54:50
  Speaker 3: people whose taste we can align with, but but ultimately,
• 54:54
  Speaker 3: as an artist, you have to find those lines for yourself.
• 54:55
  Speaker 3: I think I've I have deliberately put myself in situations
• 54:59
  Speaker 3: creatively where I out well be uncomfortable and I won't
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: know what's going to happen next, and I have to
• 55:03
  Speaker 3: find a solution. I think about collaborations like that too.
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: I've I've been in the room with musicians who I
• 55:08
  Speaker 3: respect greatly and who I've been trying to build some
• 55:12
  Speaker 3: kind of musical bridge with, and you know, sometimes it
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: works and sometimes it doesn't, but there's always an interesting
• 55:16
  Speaker 3: lesson to learn. I think that I think that trust
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: comes from not being afraid to make a mistake. I
• 55:22
  Speaker 3: think that there's nothing that prevents creativity more effectively than
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: the fear of making a mistake. That's that's the ultimate
• 55:28
  Speaker 3: death nail for you being opened and you being you know,
• 55:32
  Speaker 3: And I experienced this all the time, and I think
• 55:34
  Speaker 3: my job as an artist is to keep on maintaining
• 55:38
  Speaker 3: those strategies that flip you out of those kind of
• 55:40
  Speaker 3: fear directions and think, well, you know, I can take
• 55:45
  Speaker 3: confidence in my in my risk going through this challenge.
• 55:48
  Speaker 3: And at this point I've done so many kind of
• 55:51
  Speaker 3: unruly things musically that I do have a sense of
• 55:54
  Speaker 3: faith in myself.
• 55:55
  Speaker 5: People don't talk a lot about your lyrics, mainly because
• 55:58
  Speaker 5: I think you're known so much for your incredible music vocabulary.
• 56:03
  Speaker 5: Has your lyric writing.
• 56:05
  Speaker 3: Changed, Yes, it has, I think in a sense, I
• 56:09
  Speaker 3: still feel like I'm learning the ropes. I'm someone who
• 56:13
  Speaker 3: loves words and description and language equally as much as
• 56:17
  Speaker 3: I love music. I could happily talk about my experience
• 56:20
  Speaker 3: of the world in as much length as I play
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: about my experience of the world. The two worlds have
• 56:26
  Speaker 3: existed somewhat separately for me for a lot of my life,
• 56:29
  Speaker 3: Like I because the music that I've created in the
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: past contains so much kind of depth and contour and color.
• 56:38
  Speaker 3: My sense over the years has often been to not
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: try to make the lyrics too too much either, because
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: otherwise it's just too much information. So sometimes my lyrics
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: have been relatively simple in comparison to the music. But
• 56:51
  Speaker 3: as someone who just loves the whole spirit of language
• 56:55
  Speaker 3: within poetry and words and resonance and the mind that
• 56:59
  Speaker 3: it's something that I think I'm with this album. I
• 57:01
  Speaker 3: think there's a particular element of that being explored. I knew,
• 57:05
  Speaker 3: but I'm always curious how those two worlds can converge,
• 57:09
  Speaker 3: and I've always blown away when a songwriter can do
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: both things really well. Well.
• 57:14
  Speaker 5: Let me give you an example, and it's the last
• 57:17
  Speaker 5: song on your album, which is very different, and after
• 57:21
  Speaker 5: a beautiful album, it comes as such a surprise. The
• 57:24
  Speaker 5: lyrics are quite different, the piano treatment is quite simple,
• 57:29
  Speaker 5: and you use your voice in a way that I
• 57:31
  Speaker 5: had never really heard before. Can you tell me a
• 57:34
  Speaker 5: bit about that song?
• 57:36
  Speaker 7: I can.
• 57:36
  Speaker 9: So.
• 57:36
  Speaker 3: The song's called something Heavy, and it's another one of
• 57:39
  Speaker 3: these songs that I had before the album. I didn't
• 57:42
  Speaker 3: know what to do with that song. It felt like
• 57:43
  Speaker 3: it came from a totally different place from other songs.
• 57:47
  Speaker 3: But I love that figure. I can play film the
• 57:49
  Speaker 3: piano right now. It's just something I found myself one
• 57:54
  Speaker 3: day really.
• 57:56
  Speaker 7: Enjoying.
• 58:08
  Speaker 3: As I suppose, Okay, there's a song that needs to
• 58:10
  Speaker 3: be written here in some way, you know, And so
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: I I started to sing a melody, and as I went,
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: some things came out. So I was saying, I've been
• 58:23
  Speaker 3: holding something, something kind of heavy.
• 58:35
  Speaker 6: And then I had this gong.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Doorded it on on.
• 58:45
  Speaker 3: I really like that melody, and so I worked it
• 58:48
  Speaker 3: through and I figured that it might be fun to say.
• 58:51
  Speaker 6: So let go.
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: Now, let it go now, and the end of holding
• 59:01
  Speaker 3: something heavy, so so so let it go now. It's
• 59:04
  Speaker 3: like a song from from an ancestor or something, and
• 59:07
  Speaker 3: we all know the feeling of holding something for a
• 59:09
  Speaker 3: really really long time and finally realizing I gotta I
• 59:13
  Speaker 3: gotta put this down, I gotta let this go. This
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: isn't serving me anymore, this is this is something big,
• 59:19
  Speaker 3: and I don't need it. And there's there's a sense
• 59:21
  Speaker 3: of relief about that exchange, that handoff, and there's a
• 59:24
  Speaker 3: sense of grief about that handoff as well. I think that,
• 59:28
  Speaker 3: you know, it's one of those songs that just kind
• 59:30
  Speaker 3: of came it wrote itself a little bit. You know.
• 59:32
  Speaker 3: It's like the figure was there and I became kind
• 59:36
  Speaker 3: of really attached to it, and that the melody was clear,
• 59:39
  Speaker 3: the chorus, I know.
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 7: It's time to let it go.
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 3: I knew that's how we should and so I just,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 3: you know, I sang it until the lyrics came through.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 9: And every time I feel a weird upon me, you
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 9: hold a line to keep it onside normal life.
• 1:00:29
  Speaker 7: You've been holding on beside me, and it's down to
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 7: let it go.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 6: Let it go.
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 3: So the song kind of came from from there. One
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 3: thing I found on tour that I really love to
• 1:00:59
  Speaker 3: do is belt, like use my chest voice and belt
• 1:01:03
  Speaker 3: really loud. And I this album is such a softly
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 3: spoken album, and I enjoyed the idea that at the
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 3: very last minute I would really sing out. And so
• 1:01:13
  Speaker 3: the second chorus, the second chorus of the song goes,
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 3: and every time I build a wall around me, but
• 1:01:21
  Speaker 3: I belt it loud.
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 6: I'm like, every time.
• 1:01:26
  Speaker 4: I bid walll around me, you hor alte to pull
• 1:01:33
  Speaker 4: me back love.
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 6: In all this time, you never start thinking of me,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 6: but it turns letting now.
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: And that kind of catharsis was something I think the
• 1:01:55
  Speaker 3: album needed. It's it's funny, it's all this all this
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: kind of softness and consideration and warmth, and and it
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 3: needed a burst, It needed a burst open. But I
• 1:02:05
  Speaker 3: didn't write this song for this album. I wrote the
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 3: song on its own right and realized, oh, actually this
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: could totally work for this, for this record. And yeah,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: the style of songwriting and the start of note writing
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 3: came from a kind of a different place, but it
• 1:02:19
  Speaker 3: was a refreshing challenge to write from that perspective. Is
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: right from a figure or an instrument. I think the
• 1:02:25
  Speaker 3: way it was related to the rest of the album
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: is that it came from my relationship with one figure
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 3: on one instrument, and that kind of solo instrument approach
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 3: was different from other songs I've written that begin as
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: kind of sonic world, sonic environments or moods, and then
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: that is what birthed the lyrics. But yeah, this just
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: felt like a good old fashioned song.
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 5: You know, thank you so much for coming in, yes,
• 1:02:46
  Speaker 5: and just wonderful.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 3: Thank you for having me all right, it was great.
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 2: In the episode description, you'll find a linked to Jacob
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 2: car Year's latest album, The Light for Days, as well
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: as a collection of his past releases. Be sure to
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: check out YouTube dot com slash Broken Record podcast to
• 1:03:02
  Speaker 2: see all of our video interviews, and be sure to
• 1:03:05
  Speaker 2: follow us on Instagram at the Broken Record pot. You
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 2: can follow on Twitter at broken Record. Broken Record is
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 2: produced and edited by Leah Rose, with marketing help from
• 1:03:14
  Speaker 2: Eric Sandler and Jordan McMillan. Our engineer is Ben Holliday.
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 2: Broken Record is production of Pushkin Industries. If you love
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: this show and others from Pushkin, consider subscribing to Pushkin
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  Speaker 2: you like this show, please remember to share, rate, and
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: review us on your podcast app. Our theme music's by
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: Kenny Beats.
• 1:03:39
  Speaker 6: I'm justin Richmond.