Creating Song in Logic | Jacob Collier | USC Performance Science Institute

so you know what I can do here is something pretty pretty cool I'm gonna just let me just close this I'm gonna save that now I can share my screen with you guys you ready okay I'm gonna do we're gonna make a new loading session I feel I feel like rather than take down like so to take a part of legislation that I've already made which I've done a bit of one YouTube if you're interest you can watch that I've so figured I just make a new one because you know why not it's a it's three 3:35 and so yeah I can I can I guess I can explain how I think about these things that what I've kind of manifested here I suppose in my space is is a rake where as soon as I can have an idea it can be created and I suppose that that takes practice a little bit and it also takes some courage and Trust and stuff but I'm thinking right now about a song so the first one that comes to mind is Hey Jude by the Beatles sure I like which I haven't planned this really if I don't find this in it anyway I just thought of that now but what why don't we do like a tiny bit of Hey Jude just because I think you know that song I hope you know that song we don't that someone earth you doing you should be listening to it or learning out something and and so yeah maybe we just like put the first few bars of that together and see how it feels that you down is that is that cool then we can talk about layers and like how it all works so I'm gonna do is I'm going to let me see if I if I switch to this camera here can you see you can you see the keys camera now and also the logic session well this is just amazing okay so let's see this is what key should do this in maybe b-flat d-flat snice so hey dude is in four beats in a bar which means that it for every time every time the the measure resolves there's been four beats yeah so actually what I'm I think I'm going to do is I'm going to make this about 70 bpm this that's about right now let's let's think in layers for a second so Hey Jude is a fairly simple song it doesn't go too far but it's nice I think as a creative person to think about the edges and think about the decoration and I for one often think about that the decoration before I think about the the cake which is sometimes to my benefit sometimes it to my dismay or to my detriment but if we if we sing the melody for one second if you can sing at home if you want to on mute and I'm gonna I'm gonna sing the melody here in fact Andrews got my headphones on so you can hear the click and your is in the speakers so let's see if we will be flat ok so Hey Jude don't make it bad takers song oh yeah ok so so this is my vocal track hey not bad so so one thing I like to do is I like to go fast and I like to think about context so let's see I mean I've seen with my microphone it's not everything closer to me like this I think you still see my face um let's let's decorate this let's stop with the bass [Music] take a song nobody now I'd like to do some pyramids sometimes that pyramids are what I call like an AI like ladders of ladders of notes so for example a universe and then let's add another pyramid a lot of people think of composition is improvising in real time in in stop time that is so you're improvising I think you're hearing in your head but you're doing it in a stop time so what I've done is I've created a little little pyramid I'm gonna pan them here which means that they go to different speakers that's there's the left speaker and there's the right speaker and then there maybe we should have some drums and I can explain like I guess how I'm feeling about these things as I go which is all I can really say as an artist it's like how things feel well that that feels okay that feels nice for a bit like a waterfall so I'm being decorative so this year here's the lead vocal let's call it the lead and this is the bass let's call it base let's put the bass at the bottom now let's have a listen to that hey don't make it okay let's just do another quick pyramid here [Music] [Music] okay okay listen to a little piece of work this is very rushed obviously hey don't make it [Music] takers okay just come here answer so I guess the way I think about that this kind of process is that it moves it moves us as quick as I can think I don't dwell on one idea longer than I need to I'm kind of visualized I'm visualizing this is playing the piano I suppose in the sense that I'm doing I'm doing this I'm doing I'm stacking these notes up like this you know you're spreading these chords are over arpeggios and I guess having listened to music for a few years prior to this event I've I've kind of bite by osmosis I suppose realized that pyramids feel good and it also maintains a sense of time so but at this point it really I don't need a drummer per se because you can feel the time still and let's see sad let's what's what's sad well the opposite of sad is mad maybe magic so let's add some magic and as I'm adding magic I'll explain what I mean when I was 12 years old I participated in a performance of an opera and the Opera so I was navigating this the Opera it's called the the it was called the turn of the screw and was composed by man named Benjamin Britten and this opera was a horror story and there were six members of the cast and I was one of them we'll get back to logic in one second I was one of them and I sat and and learned this music and then and then I went to I went gotten sage to perform it and I did this three different times and the second time I did this the director was a rather visionary man and what he what he made us do was he made us sit down and have the scores in front of us and sing our parts but without doing any choreography without moving around whatsoever who would we sat still and for those of you who have ever been on a stage and done a kind of a musical theater thing it's very very uncommon that you're not taught to move around and you know you're not taught to move to the left as you're singing this or to reach out your hands or to look this way we sat on chairs and most attic what we did is we annotated the music in the verbs that that the director felt were inherent to the music and then we inverted the verbs and there's a fascinating exercise so for example I had if I had a line in the Opera which I sang as a as a 12 year old that was that was um that was intended to be really scary which is for example quite quite quite often because there was a very scary story then we would write on the music this may feel like a diversion for operating back oh well we'd write on the music you know this line is intended to terrify this line is intended to thrill to to make someone feel uncomfortable and and then we would and then we take that verb and we would flip it and we'd write the opposite verb which in this case would be to charm or maybe even to to calm or even to seduce or something and then we would we would sing that verb into the line and it was a crazy idea and as a 12 year old my mind was utterly blown because I was thinking how can it how can it be possible that this won't just fall to pieces and be completely round in one stage and I was wrong in the sense that when we sat and and started to to sing this stuff and eventually we got on stage and sang it in the performances by inverting the choice that the creative choice about how to deliver something you get this unbelievable kind of heightened vibration of the of the the initial intention and I find this in in real life too as well all the time but it's it's it's a really amazing feeling to to be acting in the exactly the opposite way that you intend to act but that inverted choice being the thing that brings out the initial intention so to bring that back to the thing when I'm creating music one of the things I like to do is I like to think what wouldn't I do here and then I like to do that thing and then I like to think about how it makes me feel and sometimes it makes you feel awful but often it makes me feel either intrigued or positive and so it's just something I've got I've gotten into the habit of doing this applies to any kind of creative endeavor whether it's writing a script or whether it's recording a song standing on stage making a public speech whether it's even about planning a lesson anything really you can you can think well what would be the most in sensible thing to do here it can be really liberating to let yourself go from the kind of constraints of your own judgement and expect Asian and to say okay well then let's do the opposite thing that I would expect to do and maybe we'll find our way back to the initial thing which is kind of a crazy feeling back to back to back to logic for one second then let's let's add let's add some magic on the sidelines and then maybe when what we sing make it better we're gonna make it worse just to see how that feels I found some chimes in my swamp in my sample pack [Music] wasn't that just lovely and then what's what's the opposite of make it better sort of make it make it worse yeah make it worse how can we do that musically well we can we we can we can find some we can find some strange sounds for that and as I'm doing all of this I suppose I'm I mix I'm explaining the the process of what it means to make these kinds of decisions however strange and bizarre they may end up being okay let's let's make an unhappy sound let's just make it unhappy sound that's quite happy let's do an even one happy one okay okay now let's see what we just recorded okay now let's put that down eighteen semitone 18 semitones see how it sounds sounds like a groovy lion okay that sounds from the sun's fire and maybe we should record like a gong and in fact what we're gonna do when we record the gong is we're gonna get the gong we're gonna hit it with the beat and then we're going to slow it down [Music] there's none better than that one second [Music] and now better at all how interesting let's let's take this Gong sound and we're gonna we're gonna that should slow it down a lot we're gonna slow it down a lot and this is how I get a Gong sound because I don't have a big Gong it doesn't fit but that's what the gong sounds like slow down isn't that crazy I find out really crazy so nice it's really cute okay now I'm gonna quickly finish my composition than what continuous ask me some questions I'll just I'll sprinkle some some keyboards over this and we'll see what we got okay okay that's fine I'll leave that okay well I mean that was another nice exercise let me go back to my face for one second so um what what what I tend to do with this with this kind of thing and I'm gonna still show my screen what to do this kind of thing is let all the ideas on the surface come out because that's that's where you start with this kind of stuff you think well what's in my peripheral what can i what can I let out and it's favorite couch for not not to judge these ideas and have a stupid or silly they may sound you know the end of that piece for example was rather inconclusive and strange but that but that's more interesting than like anodyne and and and ordinary and and you know so a lot someone I when I'm making this this kind of stuff I think it's it's a it's a very freeing thing to think well let's just let that have some fun with it let's see where it takes us and I think a lot in layers as you as you can see and if we were to have about five hours more time then you've probably seen me at about 500 more track in the sense that there's drums and there's base and this guitars and there's mandolins and ukuleles and more vocals percussion things there's even this guy here the Echidna who makes no sound at all like all these all these things you know are there to be thought about and added and think what an artist has to do is an artist that masses a palette you know a palette of materials and the more i've ever heard and the more courage i haven't believed happened myself the more I'm able to use and so every time I sit and create something I'm drawing on this palette and in order for this palette to maintain fresh which i think is you know the kind of endless struggle of lots of musicians is you know how do I not get stuck in my idea how do I not get into my own corner how do I not do the thing I always do here try that thing of inverting the choice it will bring some strange results but it will also fascinate you I think if you're if you're willing and obviously you know make it better it's a primary color example of this but you know if you're explaining an emotion like regret for example regret is a fascinatingly deep compound of emotions and regret for example could be could be antithesis by something like perhaps like a kind of reassuring reminisce or something and when it gets to that degree of emotion all kind of listening and and if you're listening to music with that kind of compass and you're looking out for these sensations and really it's the same as looking at the world you you begin to learn how you feel about the thing which teaches you a hell of a lot about other people seeing as one's behavior is always how one feels about others and then when one turns on the creative tap it becomes increasingly obvious that there are no wrong ideas and there are no wrong notes and there are no wrong wrong with wrong grooves or rhythms there were just things that feel really good and there are things that feel alright and there are things that feel not particularly strong but it's you know this is not math it's music it's a language and it's ever-changing and and and and ever ever spoken and so I suppose that when I sit down to create I'm I'm playing the instrument of rather than playing instrument of the piano or the voice or the drums I'm playing the instrument of all the music I've ever heard from everybody who's ever taught me music which is basically everyone I've ever heard and whatever comes out comes out and it's important to let that come out and and then the decisions kind of become you know become leveled up and leveled up and of increasing interest to me anyway I hope that kind of answers the question

Channel: TheLeapTV

Views: 250,903

Rating: 4.9672523 out of 5

Keywords: jacob collier, in my room, david belasco, usc performance science, usc psi, quincy jones, logic software, music, hey jude, beatles, grammy

Id: tVHyuhsAles

Length: 18min 8sec (1088 seconds)

Published: Sun May 17 2020