Jacob Collier is a polyrhythm GURU !

jacob collier is basically a production company with musicians arrangers composers producers and vocalists condensed into one rather small englishman unquestionably one of the most advanced musicians in today's music scene jacob collier released this song with the love in my heart as the first single from his 2018 just volume one album we have two things to discuss in this song so i'll start with the intro classic groupings [Music] [Music] this vocal melody is a group of nine so here are nine slots and these are the notes within the nine that the vocals sing in [Music] this motif returns later on in the song in quite a cool way this nine grouping is actually the tip of a small nine pyramid check it out so we have our vocal line which is in 916 as we said before and we have eight of those [Music] songs to cry no fighter no see the sound no sky above under those eight repetitions we have two repetitions of the harmony in nine four the first part is d over e and the second part is some kind of d at nine over g i think if you're looking for a harmonic accuracy you're in the wrong place [Music] under that we have one giant bar of nine two nine halves how do you even say that never mind uh played by the drums and the bass the first groove is in half time and the second one is in regular time [Music] so basically it's a nine fest with three versions of nine played simultaneously [Music] don't breathe no tears to cry no fighter burn no cedar sound no sky above [Music] no no cool stuff huh okay let's break down that drum thing shall we [Music] foreign so you know this groove right kick snare kick snare i mean of course you know it's the groove from that that song and what's it called ah all of them this sequence of equally spaced notes kick snare kick snare is so embedded into our brains that when presented to us we automatically assume those beats to be the main pulses so the kick will be the downbeat and the snare would be the back beat especially in the western music environment and this is exactly what's happening here we have a sequence of almost entirely evenly spaced hits that create this illusion of a steady pulse and if we count it we get to five [Music] in his live shows he even claps alongside the audience in this fake but very implied five [Applause] the hits are spaced apart kinda evenly i mean at least evenly enough for our brains to forgive these slight deviations so while this groove sounds like it's 5 in quintuplets it's actually a 7 4 in 16 notes now let's look at where the kick and snare are positioned within the seven forget about the height for a second look at the spacings between the hits six sub beats then five six six and two and three which make five we're alternating between fives and sixes which are very close numbers and in this tempo they're almost interchangeable you can barely notice the difference between them the last and arguably most important element is the hi-hat a brief breakdown of the musical roles within a drone groove typically we have three elements the low the mid and the high the kick the low and the snare the mid are usually responsible for the personality or the character of the groove the hi-hat which is the high obviously is more of like an organizer so the hi-hat determines how this groove is perceived think of chicken and vegetables for example not not that kind of chicken the tasty vegan yep that now if i cut them up and put them in a bowl you can call it the chicken salad right but if i skewer them suddenly you're gonna call it a kebab i mean it's the same ingredients but the way i organize them changes the way they are perceived listen to the differences this is the groove played with the hi-hat supporting the 5-4 illusion and this is the groove supporting the actual meter in seven four the only thing i've changed is the hi-hat so the kick and snare stay at the same place the hi-hat does all the difference great but one last thing if the groove is actually in 7 4 and 16 notes that means we have 28 sub-beats per bar if the illusion results in a 5-4 bar in quintuplets that means we have 25 sub-bits per bar so we're missing three beats where did those three sub bits go there's a big trend amongst musicians specifically from the jazz hip hop and r b realm towards this new kind of groove people call it the j dilla groove quintuplet swing quest love style laid back unquantized beats or basically everything chris dave does these grooves blur the rhythmic line of the subdivision and introduce this elasticity kind of thing that comes as a refreshing contrast to the mega produced perfect sounding music that we get from the pop world a musician like jacob collier who understands the rhythmic potential these grooves have can construct it in a way that blurs the groove enough kind of to compensate for those three lost beats the result is this wobbly elastic sounding groove this wobbliness is also why when people hear this groove they all go like [Music] so if you put a click track to this groove it may sound off at the beginning because of that wobbly effect i talked about but listen to how nicely it flows to the next part [Music] understand my soul somebody to tell me where to go intense stuff

Channel: Yogev Gabay

Views: 14,978

Keywords: polyrhythm, how to polyrhythm, yogev gabay, time consuming, subdivision, meter, time signature, polyrhythms, rhythms, music education, music theory, guest vs host, Jacob Collier, with the love in my heart polyrhythm, with the love in my heart explained, with the love in my heart analysis

Id: 4vNiYAiIUGI

Length: 10min 11sec (611 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 22 2020