Jacob Collier | Master Class | USC Performance Science Institute

we are so thrilled to welcome back the incomparable Jacob Collier [Music] [Music] when tribest cuz you don't succeed [Music] when you go where you want no I you need [Music] we feel so tired but you can say [Music] Starkey and the tears come streaming down your face when you lose something you call [Music] well you love so world and he goes [Music] good [Music] nice swirl God [Music] and your bones and I will try [Music] fears you [Music] hi about you know when you do love to let it show but if you never try [Music] [Music] to fix you [Music] Oh [Music] you [Music] [Music] [Music] that was the song by Coldplay called fix you which is my faves now she never played that song before in piano house the first time but I like doing things for the first time under a little bit pressure so that's just me I can do I'm gonna move position in this room from here to there and so bear with me for just one sec well I'd get myself positioned and then we will crack right on with this thing you ready can you hear me talk while you're moving all right all right can everybody hear me if you can hear me say wave or something yes Wow hear you perfectly well you can see there's 430 and people students climbing Jacob yeah every time you play you know you play even the songs that we've heard before you play them so differently and reinterpret them it's just it's just such a joy to have you back at USC everyone will greet you and wave hello and on the way out but as Hamilton would say that is the room where it happens right that's that's the room in my room that's where hideaway was recorded can you give us a little tour of your room just with the camera that you have there and tell us about it yes I can so yeah this is this is basically the room that I grew up in as a child I'm still a child at 25 but when I was really truly a child I was also growing up in this room and just to show you what it looks like there you go this is it so let me see I can't really I guess I've got to show you around physically but this is it so there's like there's my the piano that you've already met and there's the drums in this corner didn't you see the drums a little bit some percussions hear that and what you don't see which I can maybe show you if I do this is that like up on the up on the walls there's like a guitars I'll see that and I've sort of I've just been collecting things that make sound for a long long time because I like things make sound because I like sound but anyway yeah this is this is the room this is kind of the room where things happen in my life is a really important one for me this chair is very important to us it for many hours in this chair I've made three three and three-quarters albums in this room I've almost finished the fourth one give me like a couple weeks but yeah it's it's really nice to be to be home I was planning on being on tour right now it's just that was the plan was like be on tour in fact I would have been playing it at The Wiltern in Los Angeles just yesterday night it was crazy to think I wasn't there but um in other words I've been preparing for this my whole life you know some I'm always stocked up and kind of hanging hanging out but I sort of was thinking that for most of us you know staying at home we're not nearly as productive for you sheltering at home is a competitive advantage for you and creating music how are you spending time is this a reflective time a productive time a sad time and and do you see that translating to your next compositions um all of the above I suppose yeah I heard there was a virus going around to be honest I've been too busy making making music to repay attention are just not true I have me paying attention it's weird I mean you know it's a comedy deny that it's a bit the tragic moment in human history and I think it's difficult to wrap your head around it in some ways and in other ways it's very simple because everyone's in the same boat and I think that's a really really really rare thing in the world and it's kind of something to be rejoiced and to be expanded and sort of understood so I think as a musician it's like my job is to kind of you know see the world and report back or something and so I think it's a really interesting time to see the world and also really just in time to report back now to try keep as open as I can you know about the whole thing well we talked yesterday briefly and I told you I want to maximize the time where students are asking you questions and I want to sort of just step step aside and moderate where necessary it is 322 a.m. in London so for a musician what is this almost your lunchtime yeah it's like I suppose it's like brunch and can you show what you're wearing furthest for the class oh well if you insist yes my onesie on it this is credible warm these things can get wax when I'm when I appreciate you like now but yeah I mean I mean my want my monkey ones they said please forgive me or enjoy that or whatever you whatever reaction is usually half you can have it you can have that we we will celebrate it and I want to start with with Bethany Bodine she has a question Bethany are you ready to go hi I'm here I was wondering how you think about creating music today and your role in that and how you align the creative aspects of composing along with the commercial ones and what you find drives you most oh that's a fantastic question can you actually repeat that one more time just so I can take it fully in it so everyone can take you for you yes I'm sorry is wondering how you think about creating music today and your role in that as well as how you align the creative and the commercial aspects of composing and what drives you most why is it okay put it so I let me see if I can get back to the original um yeah so music today is a fascinating force I think it's one that's ever-changing it's been changing for a while but it's never changed so fast as as it's changing at this moment I think that one thing that's becoming increasingly clear is that there's an immense amount of freedom that exists within the music making world that someone's didn't use to exist and I think that it's it's a it's a beautiful thing to be making music right now I grew up so interested in music that having a career was not really on the cards till very recently I suppose I was just kind of I was trying to understand things I was hearing to me there was so much joy in the music that I was listening to across every kind of conceivable what I now understand to be genre but back then it was just kind of like music and and so what I suppose what I did as a child is like I said drank in everything I could I was a massive sponge I think I think many musicians and many creative people and many people who wish to learn and naturally learn or I didn't didn't do particular with with education not that I didn't enjoy it but I think I was I was a bit selfish about it and I kind of took what I enjoyed and the rest I really kind of couldn't with particularly much further than like okay I'll just about do the thing that you want me to do and so it's really when I left the kind of music educational system that I began to realize that I might have accidentally have started a career and it was a cool feeling I suppose I mean I spent a lot of time in this room not thinking about how to run a business or or what it meant to be commercial or anything like that in fact I was quite afraid of all of that world I thought so for like that was quite alien and not conducive at all with being created which I've since kind of rediscovered that it there is a kind of synergy between it but I think at that point I was I was really protective of for my space protective of my ideas I think that lots of people can be like this and it's really understandable and it's right I think when you're coming up and you're trying to figure out what's going on just to you know to make as much you can and then to try and organize those ideas into things that you feel that they belong to you and you know you can navigate and I personally just began to make videos and I I made I made some videos in this exact room in fact and I was I was sitting in this room on basically this exact chair and I think my sister's iPad from upstairs shows little iPad 2 I think it's quite antiquated and I would play instruments I'd film myself and I would I'd kind of I'd start layering these things on top of each other I was crazy music as I was listening to it and I never listened to it from a commercial standpoint I suppose I listened to it from a from a kind of open-minded one and so my idea of what it meant to create kind of evolved as I learned what it meant to listen and couple strange changes that happened when I was a teenager one of one of those changes thing that people stopped paying for music which I don't really think think too much about it was like well okay that's fine then will stream it I wasn't you know I wasn't lamenting much I was just thinking well that means I can listen to more music that's that's fine you know I was about 15 and so actually the whole thing of YouTube and Spotify thing happened to an extraordinary time in my life because it's just what I wanted to get crackin on like digging deep into all these spaces and to all these musicians who plays on this album who how does this person interact with this and how does yeah how does this how old is this person and it's just the whole thing was so interesting to do research on so I was able to sit basically at home and do research on things and so again I was very interested in that I was interested in how it all fits together and I would take you know tape music and I would I'd learn it I'd learn how to play it on the piano I'd say I'd sing it at sing a bassline sing the drum line I'd kind of sing the sounds sounds I was hearing and eventually I got a microphone which is called a and I got my friend Corden sm58 microphone which is really a rather cheap microphone it's quite common but it's perfectly good it's like just a little microphone that you would find on any open mic stage and and I recorded everything without mic for ten years before I got any other microphones I this one of the microphone and things like 80 pounds and well spent I've got 10 years of music out of it and I would record vocals and I started to record more than one voice on top of each other which has become a kind of thing that I've enjoyed more and more and I would record drums with this one Micra it's not not very you know legit because special record drums with stereo mics and there's a kick from mic and there's this Michaelmas no move this and tommix even a hi-hat might but one sa-58 on top was good enough for me make these videos began to share them recognized that there was something in what I was doing was interesting to people couldn't figure out what that was necessarily other than the knowledge that I'm maybe I should keep going and so I kept going and I kept on sort of discovering different things I learnt the most about music from actually arranging other people's songs first of all you know take Stevie Stevie Wonder Tunes or take Michael Jackson Tunes or or just standards and I was try to stretch them as far as there we go it's you know stretch them into all these different weird and interesting spaces and in sharing those songs I think it you know people who lock their songs come to jumped on the bandwagon to a certain point even though that lots of people were quite confused as to why I would want to destroy them in the way that I was doing and I learned how to compose music out of that process and by the time I started writing music I had a fan base who knew me from my musical language to a point but not for my songwriting that was really interesting and so I guess what became increasingly clear is that as a musician nowadays it's it's not just about the music you're making its about your choices the decision-making that you do how open you are with that and and I found myself wanting to just naturally kind of wanting to intuitively open that process up to people whether it was showing them all the little video screens of things that were happen Multi multi screen videos or even eventually talking about music a little bit and saying well I think if you add this note in the corner makes you feel a bit like this and this this stuff I haven't really communicated to people before but it made sense in my mind and so I began to build this vocabulary with you know between me and my fans and it was really cool and it was really interesting and you know rather than it being like well I make the music and then it goes and sells itself I was doing everything I was doing social media I was doing the mixing I was editing the videos I was you know I was doing arrangements I was playing all the instruments and I was checking all the comments and I was moderating and I was just like seeing what was going on making plans and all this kind of stuff and I was really working alone till I was about 20 years old which is five years ago now and at that moment there are a couple of crazy people I began to get in touch with me one of them is actually on this call I see Peter skins in the house which is pretty awesome hey Peter I remember Peter when you post on Facebook and you said hey this is a video that this little kids doing it's crazy I I realized that I'd done something right because someone like Peter s canister the music was mind-blowing for me I done research about this man I just forget he played with you know play with everyone from John Taylor to whether a point is crazy so I you know it felt like I was meeting people in their universes and so rather than kind of attached myself to one stick to thing I was doing I just kind of kept moving and I kept opening up the aesthetic to the point where now I think that I have a relationship with my fans which is in some ways unique and in some ways it's the rift that all of our all artists need now need to have for their fans which is not that the fans are attached necessarily to the music but that they were touch to to me in some way and that they they trust me they trust what what I have to say that they trust where I have to create they trust the nuance with which I want to express things and and really for me I think there's no valuable that there's no more valuable a sort of playing field than that and so I guess going back to the question about you know what does it mean to make music today and what excites me most about that I think that music today in some ways is the same as it ever was you know musicians can you know increase the number of available realities for people the world to exist in and can by teaching themselves about themselves in their decision making and all we're not people to learn themselves to get them to dance get to sing bring people together it's a massive language it's a universal language I suppose and you know in other ways it's changed and you can make that you can design that space how it feels right to you as a musician and I guess one thing that's pretty clear is that you can't be anything other than yourself in all this process and people try for their whole lives many many years their whole lives to to kind of mold into something that they think will fit that I guess it wasn't that interested in that and said the thing that still excites me most of all about this whole shenanigan is that I'm just being fascinated for a living and that's cool you know I get to I get to grow the things I'm interested in and I think by learning about them and sharing about them it's more of a dialogue it's like a two-way dialogue much more than a kind of one-way street and so I'm sort of I enjoy the process of being on the edge of my comfort zone of learning and expanding the whole time and so as that happens and people are listening and watching it kind of rather than taking it as pressure which it can sometimes feel like pressure I think it's it's nice to serve alkalis that into forward momentum and on the days where it feels like that I'm ever so grateful I hope that answers the question you are answer the question much more we're gonna we're gonna I'm not just to say jump around I want I want to have a student follow up on that you know the question originally sort of related as well to the business of music versus the the creative aspects of music and I there was there was a quote that I always loved from Garrison Keillor that said art is an imperative stronger than Commerce Commerce and I think you'd probably wake up day thinking about creativity and art more than Commerce but I think if you're authentic and the commerce may may flow I want to jump to Aurora because we're talking about how you build songs you talked about layers and I think she has a question technically on how you build your music or are you available yeah your music it seems super complex to make but really easy and enjoyable to listen to so I was wondering if you could briefly take us if possible through like a logic session that you would have and how you build layers with sounds for your music yeah that's amazing and thank you for saying that that's that's definitely reassuring to hear um so you know what I can do here is something pretty pretty cool I'm gonna just let me just close this so 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 location that I've already made which I've done a bit of one YouTube if it interests you can watch that I've so figured I'd 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 up something and and so yeah maybe we just like put the first few bars of that together and see how it feels it 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 it's 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 gonna 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 harmonically 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 I'm just get my headphones on so you don't hear the clicking your is in the speakers so let's see if we will be flat okay so hey you don't make it bad takers song oh yeah okay so so this is my vocal track hey dude 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 no bad now I'd like to do some pyramids sometimes that pyramids are what I call it like and I like ladders of ladders of notes so for example building a little 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 vote for let's call it 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] it's not here is sharp gonna redo that one I think nice okay let's just let's get it into this phrase and we can start talking about okay here we go [Music] there's a little piece of work this is very rushed obviously hey don't make it burn takers okay just come here s so I guess the way I think about 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 is I'm doing I'm stacking these notes up like this you know you're spreading these chords out 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 I don't 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 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 we would we sat still and for those of you who have ever been on a station 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 Armagh static what we did is we annotated the music in the verbs that the director felt were inherent to the music and then we inverted the verbs and was 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 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 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 twelve-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 creasing 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 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 and standing on stage making a public speech whether it's even about planning a lesson anything really you can you can think well what 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 expectation 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 when 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] so 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 as I'm doing all of this I suppose I'm I'm explaining the the process of what I'm used 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 more 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 a beater and then we're going to slow it down there's one better than that one second [Music] and now better at all how interesting let's let's take this gum sound am I gonna sit that she slowed 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 it crazy I find out really crazy so nice it's pretty cute okay now I'm gonna quickly finish my composition then we'll continue answering 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 a nice exercise let me come 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 stop showing my screen what do this kind of thing is let all of the ideas on the surface come out because that's that's where you start with this kind of stuff you think we'll what's in my peripheral what can i what can I let out and it's favorite crucial 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 you know so a lot of someone I when I'm making this kind of stuff I think it's it's 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 you were to have about five hours more time then you probably see me at about 500 more track in the sense that there's drums and there's bass and its 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 amasses a palette you know a palette of materials and the more i've ever heard and the more courage i haven't believed having 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 before there'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 emotional 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 Riya 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 grid wrong grooves or rhythms there were just things that feel really good and there are things that feel all right and there are things that feel not particularly strong but it's you know there's this it's not math it's music it's a language and it's ever-changing 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 instrument of all the music I've ever heard from everybody who has 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 and of increasing interest to me anyway I hope that kind of answers the question does thank you so much that was incredible that was beyond incredible I mean we almost don't want to ask questions to slow you down but I think you said there are no wrong notes for you know elite musicians particularly jazz musicians who can improvise and play off and I think I was either miles or wouldn't Marsalis said that you know someone hit a wrong note and everyone just adjusts right on the fly you seem like that's something that you would do and before we sort of let you away from this and I'm glad you mentioned how many layers because I saw an Instagram you just post something with 500 layers and it's not just music and sound and voice it's the sound of the fence makes it sound that I can makes you've recorded all these different things that you have available and you layer those together but can you talk about harmony we've got only a few music majors in class but I can see by the climbing number of people watching this more musicians are coming online from Thornton at USC from Juilliard from Eastman and just folks who could like you who just flat out play can you break down and explain to lay people the the Immortals among us of how hard he works in music and why it is almost innate to our ears I cannot yes I can let me let me let me switch to the Keith camera okay Tommy let's talk about harmony how many is is a concept of humankind harmony is about things going against each other and making you feel some kind of way in theory music is built around kind of melody and harmony and rhythm and sound and space and a few other things but harmony is my personal favorite I've been crushing on harmony for many many years in fact 25 years so hommies Robbins when we put notes together and so here's a note see she'll turn this up there yeah this is this is the note say for example now if we if we add things to see such as G [Music] there you go G or F or D or E flat or C sharp will be C all these all have different kind of flavors and obviously this becomes more interesting are we starting more notes so [Music] all these sounds have names and labels and and and there are cultures surrounding them and all this kind of things so so when we as musicians think about harmony there am a lot of the time we think about you know how we want to flavor the thing because I think that in in music a lot the time you can you can be extremely flavorful with with this harmonic choices that you make so a lot of music in the world or have you know is built around the idea of a triad and a triad is is a three part chord such as this or this this I'm just using triads I can play about for about 100 million songs there are 12 notes on the keyboard and and so it's really nice just going to get to know them and and to figure out what they do with each other so one thing that we as musicians think about a lot is the idea of resolution and I think of myself a lot the time as a musician as a storyteller and so how you arrive in a place is it's a very interesting thing to imagine and I guess I'm also thinking about the idea that I mentioned earlier of you know just kind of how it makes you feel if I'm in the key of C which means that I call this sound home then there are in in traditional culture there are a few different keys that would be automatically associated with the key of C the kind of neighboring keys I suppose so G is one of those an F is the other one so hey dude for example [Music] is regis those three courts now what jazz musicians like to do whether or not that's me i first post probably yesterday today is we like to do we just like to think about how to make this a bit more spicy so you know even just this first chord here c major if i add a note to this chord like there's no d for example this d creates momentum and the momentum is really interesting because this here is a tension that I can release by moving their note downwards its attention this is a this is a very very traditional tension that I'm sure you're familiar with whether you're a musician or not this tension here alright that is not it's not particularly wholesome sound that's not the end of the song that's the end of the song that's that's our resolution that's our that's our journey so this in music is called a cadence when your cadence to a key Center when your cadence to a call means that you resolve in the chord now what harm with harmony you can you can scale this to all manner of interesting intricate things this court for example is if you're a really rich kind of juicy chord but all these notes have their own individual tension that need to be released it's a bit like writing a story and having multiple characters with multiple Al ailments that you need to tie up you know in one go and it's really satisfying for the reader when things are tied up because it's like man I didn't think that was coming but it all makes sense you know so a chord like this was the one I just played we can we can manually resolve these tensions if I go into C major so not to bore you too much but let's see G you can go to C that's understood right so whatever chord you have one of my favorites can all be resolved you can make sense of all these notes and so when I say there are no wrong notes these might sound like wrong notes and it would be a bit like mary had a little lamb that's not good but if all of these have a place to go and you really your palette start to expand and expand and so will we think about within music is how to move from from key to key that's one of the things that's most interesting and I've spent many hours just playing in keys like this is the key of D for example I'm in D major right now wholesomely I'm not not leaving D major and one thing that church organist in the classical tradition to be able to do is they need to better modulate at the shortest notice tanuki so now we're the key of F and what's nice about trading watering keys is that the element of surprise comes out of the blue and it's really interesting to control that as a musician is so interesting to control get to hold the reins of how this thing feels you can set people up in a space I hope obviously like well no but I'm not going to sing that song but yeah this is this is my space I can choose to disrupt this space with attention and a resolution yeah attention resolution tension atencion atencion resolution and so the journey away from and back to this sound there's the heart as the whole of cadence in the whole of harmony comes back to that it's like how do mister feel just so happens that these notes C and G belong in a number of keys a number of cause for example C major and also a flat major and B flat major and D flat major and D major he flat seven and a minor and B seven this yeah Aoife there's loes you can like continuously explore and that's what I did as a child over there because ice at that exact piano and I was like ah no yes yes yes and eventually you know the sounds that were initially nose became yeses once I learn how to how to how to grapple with them how to deal with them and it's truly extraordinary that basically any note goes with any chord and and any chord goes to any chord and any bass note works with with any upper structure and it's this this open thing and so you can really just get interested as I have done to a point and I'm still learning all the time about what these notes do when you release them to your soul like how they actually change your sensation and this becomes increasingly obvious when I play a song that you know like hey dude if I go hey you don't you're like okay yeah we understand it was a [Music] then you're like oh that's a little bit of a spice but I still feel kinda like hope or you're like okay just lost me I don't know what's going on those back so the control that it's all about control it's about learning how how to sculpt these landscapes these journeys using every note in every chord make sure that each one has a place to go learning how how it affects a chord when you change a note when you're moving over any other note and the responsibility that comes with dealing with all his notes in their directions that's like why I get a kick out of most of all that was you know even for non musicians or beginning musicians just what we just learned and how it resolves out sort of thinking while you're in C and how you take you know it's one of the students said your music is complex to make and simple to hear and some you know simple song in C like you know Bill Withers who you know we just lost a lean on me maybe the most simple chord progression of all time but how you reimagine those things and how you can take something like that and make it sound different but still familiar there's a genius in that and we could listen to you continue to do that all night I know the students of if you're reading the chat it's fascinating amazing oh I'm just seeing the chat now Oh amazing it's just so fun to watch because we don't have you know a ton of musicians here but I can tell that the musicians are texting their friends and the numbers are climbing which is really fun let's get back to our students to ask you a question about mindset Jason Gomez are you ready with your question ready good morning I guess Jacob thank you for being here earlier you kind of mentioned that you're a bit of an introvert and and it takes a lot of courage to do a zoom class and start by playing a song so I just run okie talk a little bit about your personal philosophy and your core values when it come in relation to composing music and composing and performing music absolutely oh it's such an important question I I feel like more people introverts than care to admit it in my in my experience I also feel like the introverts are the most powerful people in the world I think that people draw power from different kinds of places and for a long long time I felt like I draw power I drew power from from Mike from my mind I drew power from from being in my mind from understanding my mind from tackling it calculating it feeling it really like being in it creating with it and I mean I made this album in my room there it is on the wall so vinyl I made it in this exact room that's a photo of this exact room and I made that arm as a celebration of that mindset really I I made it because I wanted to do something alone I felt like it was the most accurate sensation of how I'd learned music and how I wanted to continue learning it and it was it was you know a fascinating thing to grow up and to and to consistently think about well how would I go on tour bear in mind I'm here in my room playing instruments and stop time and you know I feel like I understand the science of it the balance of it and you know the more you play them we create the more you learn about this stuff how the sleight has changed in music and alter the balance but and that magic is so important I really felt like that was where the valley was which is pretty much the indoor experience and in the last three years I've gone on the road for the first time I've toured or four years and I suppose and I'll never forget my first gig and it was just the most most crazy thing really because it was at the Montreux Jazz Festival which is a very famous Jazz Festival in Switzerland the most beautiful place at one of those new places in the world mantra is amazing and these two giants of music two massive massive inspirations to me incredible piano players like real legendary kind of players in the jazz board named Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea they were to go to a duo performance two pianos face to face and one of the first things that the Quincey told me what our offer I met him which was a really weird surreal experience that filled me with a lot of a lot of joy and disbelief was the quincies they look that there's a slot at Montreux opening for Herbie and check you know would you like to do it and I said yes I would funny should ask and and then I had to figure out how to do it because I didn't have any rig I didn't have any technology I mean I knew that things existed like boss looping pedals and you know people would have so boombox and they played tracks and sing along too I really didn't like that idea but neither did I particularly wanted the idea of getting a band and playing like playing piano in the band because I felt like I'd done that in myself jazz education I was really bored of it and so after the blue dropped a man who's actually on this soon cool his name is Ben Bloomberg and he's kind of like a brother to me at this point he's like rigged up all the cameras in this room for example and he hit me up and said hey I'm in Boston and I'm a I'm a student at MIT and I build technology I'd like to create things and if you ever want to do something where you make something make some technology just let me know and I will I'll jump on scribers and have a conversation so I I wrote I wrote back to him and said well yeah it's pretty strange you sent me this message because I've just accepted a gig it's a really big gig actually and I don't know what I'm gonna do for it and so we jumped on skype we started to brainstorm ideas write all sorts of things in mind I for one had had like at that point about 19 or 20 years worth of like impossible things to to build the first of those things was a way in which I could sing harmonies like heart harmony so you know how many is now yeah sing vocal harmonies live that was a really difficult challenge and as you could see from my earlier example of recording crude though it was that I just love stacking vocals it's one of those things and I wanted to be able to go wow but here like eight notes there ain't no so I was doing in my head which is I guess how I try and play piano so I was thinking what if I I can play on piano I can sing it what I really need is a kind of sampler or I can sing and then through the keyboard comes that becomes what I'm singing and all these different ways in which this can be done and we did some research and found that the only one that existed was this thing called the TC Helicon voice I've touched too and that thing did about I think it did four voices it you could play four voices at once on the keyboard and singer over the top of it so five in total five voices have you're independent from the voices and I went to twelve I went to twelve voices and I wasn't gonna settle for anything less and I said that to Ben and Ben said let's do it my man and so I flew over to Boston and I met him and that was a really crazy trip because actually it was it was like my first trip away from home without my without my family like it was a month long and you know I was so used to being at home and that was like yeah month trip I was on my own looking after myself was crazy but I stopped by Ben's apartment we sat and had I brought my little T Telecom which I've been using for a couple gigs until that point like you know that little jazz case in London I suppose and so this is what this can do how can make this bigger and better so we tested to be tested for a couple of weeks and then we we found some of the kind of work then we went back to our respective homes and met again in a couple months and refined it and in the meantime we were also building a thing which basically and it will meet a loop so I was able to walk around the room room or stage and loop these instruments one on top of the other and I mean there was lots to remember because I had to remember to do exactly four measures of bass here and then two measures have walking to the coast and as I was walking out to pick up the drumstick and then smile at the audience because that's something I always forget to do I was used to forget to do and then I would play the percussion for two bars and it would loop for three more times than remove the guitar so there was a lot of maths going on I might in my mind which is not really how I imagined music to be performed it was really satisfying doing it because it was a kind of it was almost like a like it like a workout it was like I'm gonna be all these different roles in the music I just had been training my whole life for this back to do it at that moment and I couldn't make a mistake so I made a mistake it will be looping forever and ever and it was awful really humiliating for everybody except definitely me so we built this kind of half an hour set with this one-man show travel to Switzerland everything was breaking the night before and we were in one of our hotel rooms that there's this video part of the the one-man show at that point to where basically every time I moved from instrument to instrument you'd see multiple Jakob's on the stage at the same time because we had two Xbox cameras on stage and they were skeleton tracking me so whenever I sent a loop message that message was sent to the video production and so I would I'd be going like and then I'd move over to this and you'd see my ID split from my own body based on this massive video screen behind me and I'd play everything live and it was an amazing rig really but everything was breaking so we were debugging like the hotel room TV and all this stuff and and you know it got like 50 minutes before the show and it's the kind of thing well we hadn't actually run the show through yet we hadn't like run straight from top to bottom we kind of like run songs and we kind of knew what was going going on but we don't know the tech was going to work really but all we knew was that we have 30 minutes and so that's what we had and we were gonna make the most of it so I went on stage you have to imagine this like on the side of the stage this Quincy Jones Herbie Hancock Chick Corea and then there was rashida Jones as well because Quincy's daughter now all just sitting like this inside the station I was this kid and my base here in my pajamas and no one knew who I was in that audience not one person and I went on and I did my thing and it was great it was smooth it was as it was as good as I can imagine it to have been really because you know there was another - play piano remember I played these instruments and I I learned I learned more in that 30 minutes then I learned like in the whole of educational prep for performing because you know when you're looking when you're learning how to perform especially music you you really don't talk people we don't talk about what it means to have an audience front they talk about what it means to get it right and what it means to not make a mistake and if there's one thing I've learned from the I think if it's put 400 gigs I've done since that Montreux Jazz Festival gig it's it's the same as the harmonica lesson there is no such thing as a mistake on stage it's really only about how it's like how you deal with that and what it inspires and I think that if you can get to the point in your in a creative space where you're inspired by your mistakes or inspired by your even your own weakness then you're in a really undefeatable position because you're able to take the blows that may come and I can lift so many blows in terms of live performance like the laptop breaks or one of the instruments falls over or string snaps or the audience is not paying attention or my water spills over my foot and I just have to keep smiling or whatever there's lows and there's loads of things that have happened in crazy corners of the world all over the place just like the crew not preparing or cable goes bad or whatever and you you have to learn how to how to be creative with those with those things and obviously I'm talking about musical performance but in life this is such a this such an important thing to do and I've gotten way better at it since I've started performing but the key thing I learn when I was performing is that I didn't have to pretend to be somebody I wasn't onstage I when I saw people onstage I used to think well surely that's not the other person is in real life sorry they're pretending to be loud or maybe they just are really loud maybe they're really extroverted and then I got some watch musicians turns out that most of them are introverts but a lot of them have this skill set where they were to go on stage and perform and they're confident in that and so you know going to it I kind of imagine myself as like painting my face with this kind of like energy and going out and being loud and going back in and then being small again and recharging and recharging recharging and I've completely I completely underestimated myself because I now live for touring more than anything the world and it's the thing that gives me the most energy in the world and I feel so safe on that stage I feel so safe and it's not safe because I'm like in a cocoon or because I'm yeah in my nest or because because I know everything's gonna be okay in fact it's kind of the opposite I don't know anything is going to be okay on stage I don't know what I'm gonna do next I don't were going to say next I'm now touring with a four to five piece band and we have no click no metronome in the ears we kind of improvise things all the time and all the electronic sounds are made in real time to this upset you know playback and it's all completely in flex and there's also a moment at the end of every show where I stand and I improvise the audience as an instrument and this is something I've been enjoying recently is basically giving the audience some notes and moving the notes up and down doing dynamics and it's all it's really unspoken it's just using eye contact just using hands and arms and and and humor and courage and it's really taking me by surprise because if you'd said five years ago like this will be you you'll be you'll be operating on stage doing this extroverted stuff but with this level of comfort then I really would have had trouble believing you but I think that what introverts do is they draw power from what's inside them rather than what's outside them that's a very simple difference there is not one right way of being but extroverts recharge from people and I find the idea of being extrovert really far kind of far-fetched just for me personally and I think that when I go onstage and I know that I'm drawing I know that I can diagnose my inner space as something I can I can draw from in everyday you get a different kind of like selection of things that you can draw from in your life but on certain day is this just this magical thing where you're so connected to the most quiet space and also to the most out space as well the most outward space and those are the days right for the most potent on stage because I'm the most honest and on the most honest if I'm the fearless and I'm most fearless if I'm the most comfortable and I'm comfortable if I don't need to worry if I make a mistake and so all that to say if I'm saying I'm safe thinking oh my god if I play this f-sharp I'm screwed like that's game over the audience is gonna leave I want my career you know and and that's how you're trained to think you're literally trying to think that in musical education don't play the F sharp that's wrong or you know play up with more this or less this or within the spirit of this or this person would disagree or this person would agree all these voices they're all great but you have to learn when you step on stage to park the universe of dialogue that happens inside your mind to draw from what you have inside of you whether you're excited or introverted actually and just deal with expressing the truth and in doing that and learning how to do that as I'm still learning I have discovered an immense strength in myself that I never thought I would ever have and it's so changed my life not in music but in life about what it means to draw from within what it means to to yeah just to have basic courage and even basic care because a little performers don't care about their audience they kind of play at the audience but for me something like improvising a five-part auditorium does not work without care you have to be patient you have to be clear and you have to trust and these are all life lessons then they're not just musical this is their life lessons and I think you're just yeah the more I've I've dug into the incidence this process of of learning myself in in in producing and thinking about and I'm listening to him playing music the more I scale those same qualities in life and I really couldn't ask for a better kind of space to be learning myself than the music that is I don't know where to even follow that up Jacob it's it's so poignant and applies to so many parts of life certainly you know entrepreneurship and fearlessness and vulnerability and creativity and risk it really does apply to life and that's why music sort of is that the you know the soundtrack for or everything in life for those of you who attended scalish here the technology summit we were lucky enough to bring Jacob to sort of reignite his one-man show that Ben helped him create Thank You Ben it was it's astounding to see him play you know ten instruments loop them alive and sing along and accompany them and then I was also at your your last show in LA at The Wiltern I believe it was with Mike Katona's on those on the throne as well around the call and I've never seen an audience so obedient so knowledgeable on music and so sort of within your spell where you just had us singing all different parts of a song for the first time it really is something that when you do get back on tour everybody in this class everyone on the zoom call you have to go see him live because there's just nothing like I think you've got a taste of that I want to close it be respectful of his time because it is said this for Haiti in the morning and he's just getting started so I want to finish with one last question that I'll ask on behalf of a student who had to go to another class and then if you could play us out that would be wonderful but the question is about mentors and students are thinking about you know who they who they pursue and ask and for help in their lives and their careers but I also want them to thinking about being mentors to others and you uh you mentioned Quincy finding you on YouTube and sign you and I know Michael today is online who's with Quincy Jones productions and is still your manager to this day and I sat with Quincy after your show at The Wiltern and he was just beaming with pride about not just your talents the way you see music the way you arrange music but just the future of music and how how optimistic he is with people like you that are creating for a long time can you talk about your this is a question from a student can you talk about your relationship with Quincy what you learned from him and the impact that he's had on your life even more than your career yes absolutely and thank you so much for those beautifully kind words Quincy Jones like I said if you don't know Quincy Jones you you kind of can't you can't can't live a life in music without coming contact with that man he's just one of the greatest he's done so many things so many things from kind of starting in jazz in the 30s 40s 50s playing with some of the most legendary jazz musicians of all time arranging for those musicians taking them on the road and being their bandleader to eventually discovering the the the studio and producing her albums which led into you know produce albums like thriller for example by Michael Jackson and off-the-wall and all sorts of things that he was kind of the first guy to bring jazz into into rap which is a huge huge paradigm shift in music that someone like Kendrick Lamar now is like absolutely domineering and quinces he kind of broke that mold and you know but I think but besides just being an all-around unbelievable musician he's just one of these people that that kind of there's this aura around him of of looking outward which i think is really rare you can sort of look at people but looking out into people there's something that I see him do a lot and it's it's extraordinary when I first met Quincy I was very very protective as I've mentioned earlier of my space you know what what his his the reason for him reaching out was recent so that he could help me in some capacity to have my career in and so he basically asked me you know what not directly but his whole team who were all amazing human beings they all said well can can Quincy manager you Jacob and I and really icicle II said for about a year I said you know can you just can you just wait a bit like no not yet but but maybe you like it maybe eventually why don't we just be friends for a little bit and I I remember being on skype with my mom and saying can we be friends and then still like yeah we can be friends and I'm so glad I did that because I think what was afraid of was it someone's gonna scoop me out of my space and say do this and this and this and I was just not having any bit and it would have made me really lose interest in the music industry had that happened I'm very grateful that Quincy kind of trusted me because I think that once that was ascertained you know we would hang and eventually that that team would help me do things in my in my life in my career like booked my flights and hotels and things like that was just really really wonderful and also just answer questions that I had about physical publishing and you know what I meant to release music how it could be released how to look who your fans are and how to interact with them nor you know what time of day Jeep should I be posting on social media if that even matters you know also some things like this and and eventually I realized I wants to make an album and that that would kind of be possible most of all with a team so I said I get I get Quincy the green light after about two years really of just hanging and hanging out friendzone you know and and and then eventually we you know we started hanging and it was it was amazing I she has always respected my space but he talks in so many beautiful ways about the balance between humanity and music and also the bonds between music and music you know what I think she likes to say is that you know you should never underestimate the balance of the balance between science and soul he likes to call it science and soul and science being about how the thing fits yet he says you have to know you craftsmen if nobody come from you know so know where you're going it says a lot and he kind of is he like is the past of music himself like that's him but you know when he was growing up he learned with unbelievable classical composers such as Nadia Boulanger and and you know he was hanging with Stravinsky was hang with Picasso and all these people and you can ask him all these people and he won't talk about what they achieved how how successful they were whether this isn't he got here and a tote he'll talk about how there was people and it's just it's just funny how that you know these these stories come and they go and you know Quincy in many ways is a man of the past but he's very very much a amount of the present and a kind of amount of the future as well and he has such a massive amount of care for all these people and how they work and how they think and if you watch em meet people he's always open mind he's always open spirited and he always says like what's your star sign where'd you come from what's your what you know what what are you interested in and like you know he'll find something loving to say something open to say which is so rare anything if Quincy can do that then surely anybody in the entirety of music can do that and so it was really inspiring for me I think just to see someone like that first of all kind of give me the respect to have my own opinion about his stories and about his music and about my music and how I wanted to make it and the world and I think that he's someone who's really learned how strong you can be if you embraced people's differences rather than sort of it making them the problem which so many people like to do nowadays especially yeah you know I I think you know course I did page one good oh no it's all good I was just I guess I was just quickly gonna go back to the question about being a mentor I think that you know you in some ways you kind of teach what you most need to learn and I think that in some ways Quincy had got to a point in his life where there weren't necessarily young musicians who were exciting about the language of music but that's where he came from and so he's somehow kind of manifested this amazing group of young musicians of which I'm a part who I think have really brought him and his brain back to life in the most astonishing way for him and as far as I can say he's opened more doors than I probably even know in the in the world of music and so I think that they can open spirit away being a mentor and not being a thing that is about control and not about sculpting not about direction but just about trust it's you know it's it's a bit like you with your idea it's like I trust my idea I don't need to take over or or you know okay yeah kind of be a bowl with my idea I can I can let it be what it needs to be in order for it to fulfill his its potential women I don't know if he would necessarily say that but he most definitely feels it he's a mighty special human being that man he sure is and you know I've been fortunate to spend a lot of time with him in my life and I'm so happy that he introduced me to you he impacted the full-circle moment is that he and Clarence Ava were the first surprise speakers I ever had at USC in 2003 they closed the first semester sort of like you are doing tonight and it was a masterclass on history music and politics and race and they didn't leave for three hours they're best friends as you know like I can understand nothing and and it was it was it was that that lit the thought of me that we've got something very special here and we we have to continue it so that's what this this course in this series was built around you talk about home both as a theory and concept and can you take us home with something it's it's it's getting late where you are and if you could play us out one last song but I want you when we say goodbye and thank you at the end I want you to look at the grid view because as people sign off you're gonna see four hundred students and people that are just gonna smile and wave at you and it really is an energizing feeling that we can't do it in person but at least you can feel the love and admiration and gratitude that we have for you so please take us home Jake that sounds lovely all right I will I'm gonna I was thinking about what song to play at the end of this thing thank you so much for having me what the by the way guys in your in your in all of your homes it's just so so nice to see you and there's a song that I that I suppose I reminds me of home more than more than any other song and I didn't write it it's by the Beach Boys it's called in my room and my first album was named after this song and the songs on that album but I mean Here I am in my room it feels like the right song to play and we're all in our rooms and it's a really weird time and I think we're all questioning things and we're all discovering things so I suppose I'll play that one to finish off and then I'll hop back to this seat so I can I can see these these waves that you that you mentioned David but honestly thank you so much for me it's just like an ultimate privilege and thrilled and I believe I'm told this is the biggest online class that USC has ever held it it is we had to get a special license for us to go to 500 once you get up to past 200 you have to do a webinar but we wanted the ability of the students to interact with you and ask questions and be present like a small class so this is a special license that we got just for Jacob oh so cool so cool all right I'm going to either play this song then um I go to sleep but yeah okay I'll start by playing the song [Music] [Music] [Music] there's world I I can go tell my secret in yellow block out worried [Music] in my room [Music] do my dream in hell I'm escaping [Music] I do right now it's dark [Music] yesterday [Music] [Music] we stalk and [Music] Oh [Music] you know [Music] there [Music] my secret [Music] [Music] okie-dokie thank you very much how was it a hop over to get the other side of the room one more time thank you thank you very much for having me today that was such a that was such a treat the treat was ours thank you for brightening our semester it's been a really really tough time for the students and this really makes it better so everyone say goodbye and wave as you sign out so we can see everyone's faces [Music] [Music] thank you so much thank you thank you [Music] [Music] thank you amazing the world Thank You Jacob can't wait to see on tour you neither thank you so much we're supposed to beat your concert this was an amazing replacement thank you thank you so much thank you thank you thanks everybody we're gonna let him go to sleep Jacob so great for one person soon everybody say goodbye so much flasks you have a good night Jacob thank you very much good night everybody

Channel: TheLeapTV

Views: 78,282

Rating: 4.9675517 out of 5

Keywords: jacob collier, in my room, fix you, quincy jones, djesse, hideaway, david belasco, usc marshall, usc psi, performance science institute, music, grammy award, creative mindset

Id: wEsLD7z7qZA

Length: 83min 34sec (5014 seconds)

Published: Tue May 05 2020