Jacob Collier Dives Into The Details Of "Djesse Vol. 2," His Latest Album

[Music] going on it's Kevin Kenny welcome to the build series our next guest has been described as only the most innovative creative forces of his generation and joins us unbilled for the first time ever today please let's give it a round of applause for Jacob Collier thank you [Applause] thank you guys thanks that's the longest pause you've had all week yeah awesome yeah one record right out of the way that's lovely thanks welcome to Bill for the first time ever Cheers this is really cool um you know it's funny I just want to talk about this really quick we were saying in the back this used to be a Tower Records if you guys didn't know and we've had guests before that said this is the first time you know back in the day when it was a tower that they'd ever seen their music in a store do you have a story like that of the first time you ever saw a piece of your music it was in Tokyo actually really Tokyo yeah which is a long way from home I'm from London of course and yet there's there's a sort of Tower Records equivalent there I suppose mm-hmm and I went up to the tenth floor and was walking around it's like that is me that's my face that's my face on a shelf how bizarre did you hesitate did you almost like not even think it was you at first yeah you do this double-take thing you think yeah it's not that's right you know and then there's their pair headphones and it's plugged into the music and I listen to it I thought I did mix that song so yeah yeah so what's exciting about having you here for the first time ever is we kind of get to do a bit of an introduction to the audience right that may not be familiar with your music and for you it really I guess um in the modern sense it all started on YouTube that fair says how you would describe the journey yeah for sure okay see you 25 now right true how old are you when you start making YouTube videos uh I guess if I was about ten years ago is about sixteen okay I was so fascinated with music as a language and I didn't really think about having a career until it sort of happened by accident I suppose so I was I was just I was involved in understanding and experimenting with musical harmony specifically and also rhythm melody sound all sorts of things sort of music based week and thank you and and yeah so I began to visualize the things I was recording I would record multiple layers you know all these different layers whether it's percussions or bass instruments or guitars or piano and I wasn't brilliant at these instruments but I wanted to explore them thoroughly and so I would build these these tracks at home I have a wonderful room at home in London and I stole my sister's ID but I actually borrowed my sister's iPad and I would put it in different positions in their room and play these instruments I'd film the thing and then I'd I I managed to get my hands on a copy of Final Cut Express so I wouldn't advise using necessarily even though final cut now is excellent at the time fun Express was a bit gnarly but I would sit and I would create these visualizations for the sound put them on YouTube because that's what people were doing at that time and you know I was I was I was challenging myself as much as I could I was pushing my my brain my I was extending my ideas as far as they would go and a lot of the the harmonies were quite bonkers you know and I was I was interested in pushing it further and further and further and so that process of learning I suppose was was one I enjoyed sharing with people just kind of for fun and and then one day you know a video I made it was an arrangement of a Stevie Wonder song called don't you worry about a thing and it's one of those stories where it just kind of exploded it was like you know an overnight it got sort of hundreds of thousands of views and it was it was a it was a really surreal moment and it was it was lovely I was like oh that's cool that's really nice and then I just sort of kept going I didn't I didn't really think about anything changing it was more that you know now more people were interested in it and in listening but I received an email from from Quincy Jones for example and also Herbie Hancock and there to sort of giants of music like huge huge heroes of mine and so just just to sort of connect with those guys and become friends with him was was mega cool it was like the stuff of dreams but I knew I wanted to continue to explore music and learn about music and and I wanted to do things on my own and do things my own way and that's kind of what I'm still doing which is awesome when you get an email from Quincy Jones I mean is there any party he goes there's no way this is Quincy Jones BAM yeah there are a few parts of me that did that so how do you how do you verify its Quincy when you get into you you open the email INBOX says Quincy Jones yeah well I didn't I didn't really believe it was him until we scheduled a Skype call and then I got on skype and there he was I can't argue with that you know and it was cool because it the nice thing was that you know he just wanted to talk about music he's like well well what what the court was the chords in this bit of the song you know can you show me the cause I was like yeah and it's this oh yeah there's like a minor ninth interval in there and I was like yeah there is and the he's he's a remarkable human being because he's never stopped learning but he he started as a real lover of the science of music he was at a jazz jazz arranger and took that knowledge into pop you know when he was in his 50s with Michael Jackson and even before that you I mean he's done so much and so just to become friends with him is really inspiring because there hasn't been a moment I think where he's thought well now I'm quitting Joe and so I can stop learning it's just been like well if I'm Quincy Jones that means I'm learning and he's defined himself around that structure that study that kind of emotional study and that the people that have made the music and becoming friends with and connecting with those people who's been really important to him as well so we of course everybody I think if you're a fan of popular music you know Quincy Jones you know he's regarded as one of the Great's of all time of course you know did thriller back in 82 Michael do you though with such a deep understanding and knowledge of music what makes him so great in your words we know it's it's why as he would say he would say this by himself but he would say that the best music is a balance of science and soul and so there's there's there's a certain one of understanding the language of what it is you're putting together and that doesn't mean going to musical Theory class for 20 years and learning all of your counterpoint things about alright it can mean that but really it's just about emotionally connecting with the concepts you're using and so if you have a chord for example then what notes are in the chord and what does each know do in the chord it's a lovely exercise like if you take out a note and sing it instead of playing it then what does it do how's it feel to be the third to be the sixth to be the eleventh and and I didn't really put labels on these sounds until quite late in my teens but the process of studying the music by listening really really carefully to it was so cool for me and Quincy the reason I think Quincy is on this pedestal for me personally it's just that he he got that stuff together so early and he was so deep in it and then was not afraid to take that understanding into spaces beyond the understanding you know because some people and stand things for a living and maybe become teachers or stay within their own sort of psychological Wonderland's and think oh it's great that then I can go down and down and down into the absolute depths of the knowledge which is a very important part of learning but Quincy did that and then he went out and he brought everybody in and so he kind of universalized many different parts of musical language that weren't in that style of music in the past and made them not just accessible but hip yeah and that's like superhero status for a musical like me on a zero in on this idea of a balance of science and soul and when you're creating music it's it must be such a fine line do you ever find yourself leaning one too far in one direction yeah I mean in some ways I don't I don't think about that balance when I'm creating I think about that balance when I'm thinking and and conceptualizing I suppose because when you come to make a song I make an arrangement you're just gonna do what you do what you do and it's a bit like saying like if I'm if I'm a storyteller I need to get the right balance of grammar and storytelling but actually grammar should be internalized by then otherwise you're gonna be in trouble you're gonna be oh oh where does this go how does it fit together so for me I think that I spent a lot of time working out sort of how things fit together and cobbling together a kind of technique I suppose I didn't really have many lessons as a kid on instruments and so a lot of my learning was about experimenting and trying things out and once that had been done it was a matter of thinking well what what do I want to do what I want to say what's important to me what emotional spaces can I describe and that was that that for me is the only reason I would ever create music I would never create music from the point of view of I want to prove a concept or I want to you know I want to I want to generate a sort of algorithm or something like that I'm more interested in building a language than making something beautiful out of it and so I think for me that the balance of science and soul yet comes more from the way that I listen to music than the way I create it and you can listen to music from a scientific point of view like what's going on what the notes in that chord what's the how many divisions in every beat what's the swing percentage all that stuff's really interesting you know like for example just one thing on swing percentages if you have like yeah 50% that they did if you have like a 66% swing percentage it's like the ratio is to like two one I suppose and then you can get like 80% and like that that steepness of swing is like super crazy and you can experiment with how you want the groove to feel by messing with that you know and thinking I want it to be like like 57 is a favorite of mine you know and that's so weird around applause thank you talked about respecting Quincy for someone who is just as accomplished as he is and all of he's done and he's always learning if he's Quincy he's learning and I I imagine that's how you must be - what's what's most fascinating to you these days like is it swing percentages like what are you most like yeah I mean there's so many different facets of music but right now though like you're much blending out into the week or a theme of the week of what you're really just like zoned in on yeah well swing percentages is interesting as I just as I just described I'm trying to think of something else I mean that's there's there's a few different things I I guess you can think of music in terms of rhythm melody harmony and sound that's kind how I think about it and I've spent a lot of time in my life thinking about harmony and we talked about how many for a long time and and rhythm as well and that's where the swing stages comes from but for me for me recently actually sound has been one of the most interesting things I I grew up in a household of music there was lots of music in the houseless people who played music and spoke about music in the house listened to music but I didn't necessarily think about being an instrumentalist first I thought about being a musician and so one thing I've been really interested in recently and across my entire career has been recording sounds that aren't instruments and making them like musical and so for example you can take a saucepan or a lawn mower or a badminton racket there's a good actually lovely sound and I've been sharpening the recent little bit I mean I've been using them in grooves and that to me is fascinating because everything's basically musical instrument that's not great but it's still a musical instrument that's more interesting I'm not gonna knock my water and and so it the idea of being thirsty for sound it's funny because you know it in musical education of which I'm not the most well versed to be honest but I've had a little bit of time within that they don't talk about sound like they talk about tone but they don't talk about sound distance for example or how far away is the sound how where's it placed spectrally and beyond and is it higher is it low is it breathy is it close is that is the toothpaste tube of air or you know I think about that stuff all the time especially when I'm singing and for me that the voice is the most powerful instrument of all time and everyone has one that's why I think but you know you can you can wonder if if you choose to stack up your voice as I do choose to sometimes then if you go up like 20 times it's gonna be like maybe go 20 times it's gonna be like you know and so just the other of sound it has been really tickling my fans have been really pushing it recently and I'll be making fool I've made four albums I've been making four albums over the last couple years it's actually a lot of work it's like it's like it's like a fifty song album I still don't know why I did it but it's really fun and each album is actually categorized by the amount of space around the sound and so that they aren't the album's are called Jesse DJ esse Jesse and Jesse volume one is acoustic sound from a distance it's orchestral music Jesse volume 2 which is this guy is acoustic sound from a more a cozier distance a smaller distance Jesse volume III is like negative distance like negative space electronics and craziness and Jesse volume 4 is this sort of like re-emergence of distance where the listener is actually the music themselves but that's a secret I can't talk about that yet and so I've been talking I've been thinking so much about sound just with regard to where it's placed in a space and so I guess yeah not in answer to a question just people don't think about it enough I think in terms of of learning how to make music it's just like where's the where is the sound is it or is it is it you know and that distance is its life that's what life is its distance like you know distances it's amazing you think about it you're working on four albums well I mean you you've put out two oh of course already over 50 songs but you're also working on Coldplay's new album or have worked I should say yeah I did that yeah what did you do with them I can't member the names of the songs I actually stood on this research beforehand but I'm on three I'm on three songs on the new I think there's nine songs in total just text Chris yeah but yet they are there such ambassadors for like for joy I think like real joyfulness and sort of that that feeling of everybody's singing together I don't have you've seen that there's an amazing that there's there's amazing footage online of their cell Paulo sort of stadium get a new view seen it's like multicolored crazy everyone has these responds and everyone's singing like and that thing is just so crazy and so I you know I've been a fan of Kapolei for a long long time and Chris and I become friends recently which is you know still rather surreal but we're really cool he's a lovely lovely man and yeah he asked me if I wanted to sing on a few songs and I said yes and then I did and I did and it was it was wonderful but it's doing what they're doing right it's two albums and one is more experimental yeah I think that's right I think I haven't probably done this research as I say but I think there's the there's one what they call what is it I do but I was one is a sunset and sunrise Oh something like that yeah but did I mean the reason I bring that up is that did Chris tell you why he reached out to you specifically what he wanted you to specifically bring yeah album well I I wrote this I composed this piece is the first song on the first volume of Jes it's called home is and it's it I was I'm not singing on it will I am a tiny bit but it's basically a choral piece a piece of choral music and Chris is obviously a real advocate of harmony and vocals and I guess he'd stumbled across this song and was really taken with it which is amazing and he sent me an email saying you know who are you and where did you come from and so I said well I'm Jacob and I come from London and and and we hung out we got in FaceTime and I went to visit him in Los Angeles and yeah he likes the idea of me being a choir I suppose being being the search a cobia in choir that I I sometimes tend to be and so I yeah I created these kinds of these vocal spaces and I brought them to his to his songs and the band songs and it's it's it's lovely to hear it on the album it's really surreal but I was brought up listened to lots of English choral music you know sort of people like William Byrd like really old old school vocal writing which has that kind of church feel and so he had that that sort of spirit I think chris has has been drawn to and so I was interested in bringing that to to that project yeah it's exciting I'm looking forward to it it was out uh next month let's get to Twitter really quick we're gonna get a question here from at Cana Shimon new key and Connor wants oh hey Jacob what's the best way to deepen not get too deep in knowledge of harmony and the emotional impact it has what chord makes you feel what emotion thank you let's like it because I feel like we talked about a little bit of that right you want to kick it to the chord questions yeah excellent question so there's no secret source really I would say just explore in the same way that we explore language we explore chords and we explore the way that they make us feel one thing I used to do as a kid was add as many notes to a chord as I could until it got boring and so you start with a simple chord like a triad like do you do do so your C major chord three notes and then you a daddy and a B and an A and an f-sharp and then you had a C sharp and then you think oh that's really really really dense and then you think wow I could add a G sharp and that's fine too and and gradually you you become acquainted with what these with with what these notes are doing to the chord and I think that you know the best way to learn something is to do it really is to do it because sometimes people think that thinking about things will give you skills it's not really true I mean it's it will give you a sense of understanding but the only to really learn something is to do it and I remember I did my first gig ever under my own name at the Montreux Jazz Festival in Switzerland and I was opening up for a Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea these two giants absolute legends and it was with my one-man show and I toured all around the world with a woman so following that that concert but I went on stage having imagined playing gigs thought about playing gigs worked on my concepts and studied my chords and enjoyed thinking about music all these different ways and I'd excuse me I'd imagined performing but the feeling of going on stage and performing was was about 900 percent of the learning I'd ever done based in performance because I was doing it and I learned at this accelerated rate and I think that's true across the whole of your life really to be honest you have to get yourself into a position where you're slightly on the edge on the edge of your own zone on the edge of your own comfort zone and trust yourself because you're there but you you will do something if you trust yourself and so I went on stage and I did this gig and know how to clue who I was other than Herbie and check which is really cool and that that learning I remembered that the the visceral feeling of having learnt on at that moment was so real time it wasn't stop time it was real time and I'm supposed to go back to the question I would say that the best way to learn a harmonic understanding is to put yourself in a situation where you're speaking that language in real time whether it's improvising or whether it's harmonizing somebody singing or accompanying somebody it's it's very important to use your vocabulary in real life it's like if I it's like if I sat and studied German from a textbook my whole life and then I never went to Germany I wouldn't really know how to speak German because I wouldn't have outed that knowledge and so you can sit around all day and you can study chords as I didn't I would recommend you to and think about notes and think about rhythms and space and ratios and now whatever tickles your fancy really and listening carefully but make music is the best way to learn music and I would just say make as much as you can and don't be too precious and don't wait for somebody to tell you that you should before you start doing it right great let's get to some in-house questions first you gonna come from over here hi as much as I really want to ask about how you got Butch's date to sing in G 1/2 sharp I think my bigger question is with all of this spectacular genre crossing that you've been doing recently how is it that you sort of keep a sense of musical voice that is yours interesting question ya know that that's a superb question actually yeah I do like to John Rahab it's a hobby of mine and I think that really because there are lost people who want to find a sound that belongs to them right it's like what's my sound I would say sing because your voice is only yours and no one else has a voice like yours and and so for me I even though I don't really think of myself as a singer primarily I think that the voice is is the most musical is it's the most Jacobean DNA I can possibly give to any of my songs and so even if it's just making sounds or humming really softly underneath you know something I think that provides a sense of a sense of me but I guess also I just that the fact that I've made these arms quite fast means that I can't help but to fall into structures that become familiar and much as I like to challenge those structures something if you do something fast it always has or Wis like I said whisker review in it because there's not enough time for you to extract it and then like sanitize it and return it to the you know I mean if you go it's gonna there's gonna be something of you in there so you know if I'd made four hours in 40 years or ten years or even four years I think there would have been a certain amount of make the idea and then sanitize the idea figure out what I'm doing and why I'm doing it and then it's released rather than making the idea releasing it and then maybe later figure out what it was all about and I actually like I like that process a lot but it means that there's not much space or time for me to kind of remove my myself from it which it which is a good thing and so but all of the gestures that are important to me that the same gestures that report to be ten years ago and if I listen to music I made when I was you know 14 15 it was very much I could hear that I was wanting to go to the same places I want to go to now it's that I get tickled by the same stuff and so what tickles you will haunt you and I enjoy the haunting of my tickles and so I guess I allow myself to be drawn to the things I'm drawn to I try and sing as much as I can across the the sort of sonic palette and also I think just the fact that I'm producing it and mixing it and arranging it and performing most of the instruments sort of can't help but feel like it's me what whether for the better or or for the worse and I would say this a the same is true for some like Stevie Wonder who I figured out performs most of the instruments on his albums and it smells like Stevie Wonder it really does it's like that Stevie Wonder in every way but but mostly because he his gestures are so complete and they're so fundamental to his understanding and I think that you know if you're if you're fearless and you move without thinking too fast you do shine through and a lot of making music is about accepting what comes out of that and because a lot that's a bit weird and if you do music making right it's it's a difficult thing to do in certain ways because you have to face yourself and you have to learn who you are and what comes out when you turn on the tap and and how much of that you can accept and and refine and discuss and and and how much of it is healthy to think about and how much is healthy just to accept accept and and realize is true and then you know I think for me I've wanted to build myself a skillset that supports that process of explaining the parts of my life that I want to explain and that is a long process but I think that the moment it it ceases to be connected to that feeling of catharsis it will stop sounding like me and stop feeling like me and I'll stop doing it because there'll be no reason to do it anymore and I'm solving problems every time I complete something or put something together because it's it's what I love to do so much it makes any sense cool we're time for one final question it'll come from over here hi Jacob thank you for being here oh and thank you for the music it means a lot to me I'm sure it means a lot to everyone here but my question it's it's pretty related I was just wondering what advice or encouragement you'd have to aspiring musicians you may not feel like they found their voice or their audience yet yeah that's such an important question well never mate never let anybody make you smaller than you are don't wait for things to be possible before doing them because they become possible when you start doing them as Quincy would say make a life not to living and the thing that I always mystifies me is when musicians want to have a career before they've figured out music or or before they've wanted to learn about musical or wanted to consider music they want to be a musician or or be a star even that's very strange to me I can't imagine how horrifying it would be to have a career and not be connected to yourself because you would be so delocalized it would be like you're studying well it wouldn't be like studying it would be like it would be it you would feel so disconnected and so for me I think that the best thing to do is just to it's just to become as close as you can to your own structures and get and get to know your own language first and then try make beautiful stuff really beautiful stuff and take time to do it because it's that everyone's in a rush the whole time but actually there's not real really a rush a lot of people think that a career and music happens fast and you have like one moment to go bang and then a lot of time that's what happens and then those people end up with a lot of years of their life where they have to either live up to something or they they feel like they're moving downhill because they've had success early and I think for me I'm kind of I'm imagining this whole for happen thing I'm sort of plotting seeds for like 20 years time and I'd love for people to trust me as an individual and my job therefore is to is to figure out who that person is and how best to to explain myself I suppose and so I would I would say yeah don't don't think about having a career until you have enjoyed the feeling of failing at something and and completing something and learning how that feels and if people begin to listen to your music that's a wonderful thing but I think that the more important thing is for you to to to feel like if no if nobody was listening you would still have to do music it'll be something that you would have to do because it's inevitable I think I feel a bit like that if you guys weren't here interested in me talking I would probably still be having these ideas and that for me means that I have a sustainable psychology or more sustainable than then kind of extracting upon myself I think is of value putting bright packaging on it and then selling it to you and there are so many people in the world who are selling you things and a musician is a it's a privilege to think to be because you have the chance to be honest and helpful in a way that a lot of people in the media don't get to be because musicians can can and when I say helpful I mean if if if I do something that feels like me and you see me in it and you see that I see me in it and you see yourself in it then me not pretending is so valuable to you because it's it's like cold water it's like that's so real and a lot of the time we put filters on our lives and we make things feel unreal for the sake of performance and I'm concerned for the next generation because that that level of reality is the norm it's like you you act you perform your life and project it and I would I would say the best thing you could be as a musician is you the best thing the best you could gift to the world as a musician is a vision of what they could be and Glenn Gould the classical pianist once said I think it's what I think he once said that that the artist that the job of the artist is to increase the amount of available realities to the world or something like that and so that the listener is able to to to expand an idea of a space of what's possible and and and who they could be and remind them of their life rather than setting a pedestal or or inspire yes it's like you know what do you want to inspire like you could inspire a sense of envy or you could inspire a sense of glory or whatever but for me I think it's about inspiring a sense of reality like this is who I am I'm not going to pretend I'm not going to change I'm not going to fit into your tidy little box of what would be helpful if I was I'm gonna be me and that's in my opinion even though it sounds like a selfish thing it's the most helpful I can be to you because I'm being me and maybe you will be you or something like that I don't know if that really answers your question but I would just say be you because nobody else has that ability and and we need you because no one else can do that and only you are able to explain the way you see the world so like to explain the way you see the world and get mucky in in your fascinations for as long as you can and and don't wait to be fascinated and don't rush into having a job or a career out of it you know thank you you're welcome that's great sorry thank you a lot to learn in life No thank you so much dick we're a fortunate time but this is really a pleasure absolutely thank you guys for coming out [Applause] [Music]

Channel: BUILD Series

Views: 67,887

Rating: 4.9679418 out of 5

Keywords: AOL Advertising, BUILDseriesNYC, AOL Inc, AOL, AOLBUILD, #Aolbuild, build speaker series, build, aol build, content, aolbuildlive, BUILDSeries Kevan Kenney, Jacob Collier, Djesse Vol. 2, Quincy Jones, jacob collier, jacob collier tour, becca stevens, jacob collier moon river, jacob collier age, herbie hancock, harpeji, singer, songwriter, musician, artist, album, Djesse Vol. 1, MV3f, MV2f

Id: VMIAoQmJqYk

Length: 30min 12sec (1812 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 25 2019