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

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