Why Musicians Love Jacob Collier

negative harmony a 432 tuning micro tonal harmony what is everybody talking about and why our musician so obsessed with Jacob color [Music] [Music] a lot of you guys have been asking me to do a video about Jacob and his music and so that's exactly what we're doing now and just before we jump into it I want to thank honey for sponsoring this video more about that in just a little bit for those of you who don't know Jacob Collier is a musician he's a multi-instrumentalist songwriter arranger everything in between and he has taken the music community by storm with some of his outrageously inventive and unusual sounds [Music] I think it's relatively safe to say that the vast majority of musicians such as myself are completely hooked so what is it about Jacob's music that appeals to really everybody but in particular other musicians Jazz's often looked at as the musicians music and I think it's the popularity and overall audience size for it probably reflects that I don't think anybody would argue with the assessment that jazz is not really mainstream music today and oftentimes has a very difficult time appealing to a wide audience now there are a lot of reasons why jazz is maybe not as popular as it was in the past and among those I think are probably its musical complexity oftentimes the lack of any vocals at all but for me personally I've always felt like it comes down to the fact that it is a language that is very difficult to understand if you don't speak at least some of it on a basic level now contrary to that there are many types of music that don't delve so deep into complex theory and it often feels like those types of music are much easier to understand on a surface level even without having any understanding of the language at all that obviously opens up it's consume ability to a way wider mass of people which is why things that tend to be the most popular tend to be a little simpler although not always but oftentimes a little simpler than what you might expect to find in the world of jazz let's talk about a few reasons why Jacob Collier has had such an impact on musicians and why his music has become so unbelievably popular I think perhaps the most prolific area in which he has affected everybody in the music world is undoubtedly harmony Jacob has put in the time and effort to understand harmony on a level that that I certainly have not taken the time and effort to do and I think a lot of people also have not which is why so many of the things that he has done in music has kind of brought to light ideas that people like myself never have thought of before one of the very first videos he put out which became really popular was his cover of Stevie Wonder's isn't she lovely isn't she lovely isn't she wonderful the YouTube had already become home at this point to various really talented singers and musicians doing this multi-tracking let me make myself into my own chorus type of thing which you've seen me do here on this channel and many many other people have done it as well that certainly was not a new thing but what this video did that struck such it no gods such a chord great I will show myself out but this video did that was so impactful for so many people was it took that general concept of multi-tracking your own voice and harmonizing yourself and it just blew it wide open with these really elaborate jazz voicings and really really intelligent harmonic writing that quite honestly in this particular application on youtube nobody had really ever heard me for and then to almost nobody's surprised but probably to almost everybody's wow thanks for making me feel terrible about myself which we got multi-instrumentalist Joe I think a lot of people's reactions to these videos as they were coming out was just like every new one was just further more like you've just sitting there shaking your head you're like well this dude's younger than I am and I hate myself the biggest difference between what Jacob was doing and what a lot of other multitrack vocalists were doing before that he was just taking what might have been simple harmony and writing vocals as though he was playing the piano a lot of that came from two things it would come from utilizing upper extensions and alterations in a way to make court sound more interesting for example rather than playing a very very simple two five one like this or even more spread out it's basically utilizing the upper extensions of the cord to create much more rich colorful harmonies [Music] there's so many different variations slot that leads us to number two which is the usage of those upper extensions in a melodically sensible and interesting way rather than writing something which went it's preferable to have your lines move in a direction that is consistent that's easy for a horn player to execute or a singer to sing might sound something closer to this where things are generally moving in a direction in a more consistent way now this has always been a goal of arrangers and writers to write things for each part that make sense you know if you've ever been in chorus and you've ever been I don't know an Alto you've probably been plagued with having to sing one note for what seems like an eternity or just in general very boring parts to sing well for some courses maybe when you're in elementary school or middle school it's a little simpler it makes it so that individual parts are just not that good [Music] not shying away from extremely complex innervoice movements and tons of alterations it was a sound that really took everybody by surprise and since then we've seen of course that evolve into things like negative harmony micro tonal harmony crazy things that very few people have ever really thought to apply in actual performance now I'm not going to get super in-depth into the inner workings of the actual harmonic devices and other things that Jacob uses in his music because he does a ton of this stuff really regularly and if you go to his channel which I'll link below he routinely does these logic breakdown sessions where for hours on end he'll go through one of these pieces that he's done and break down the logic session and actually show you all the individual parts and how we kind of put it all together and it's a little bit terrifying how much of a wizard the students with logic but it's really really insightful to be able to see how he's actually putting all this stuff together and if you want an even further in-depth breakdown of the actual musical components that we see in a lot of Jacobs music there's a very very lengthy interview series that june lee is a phenomenally talented writer and arranger actually did with jacob he sat down with him for i think it was over an hour and just talked about a lot of these really really in-depth musical concepts number one can you tell us more about the super ultra hyper mega metal-eating scale and how you use it um well let me tell you right now i'm gonna link those videos below as well if you want to check out and really dive into some of the nitty-gritty details of what is negative harmony what is micro tonal harmony what actually is all of the stuff that jacob uses in his videos you guys real quick before we continue I hope you don't mind if I just take a minute to pay some bills this video is sponsored by honey I'm sure we've all spent time looking for promo codes for different websites really anything you want to buy well honey is literally one of the greatest things ever and I know if you're sponsoring this video but I use this and it is anybody that uses his nose that it's so convenient and so awesome honey literally finds promo codes and coupon codes from around the internet and applies them to your car you don't even have to look it does all the looking for you and it's free whether it's the small purchase or a large purchase I mean I've saved three four or five dollars on Domino's orders or I've saved $30 on gardening so literally you are just on one of your favorite websites whatever it is and you're at checkout and with honey a little box drops down all you have to do is click apply coupons and then honey goes and scans the internet for promo codes and it tries them all literally just click the button and if it can find a coupon code that works then boom you save money they've got a hundred thousand five-star reviews on the google chrome store supports over 30,000 stores online and for over 17 million members honey has found them over two billion dollars in savings not having honey is literally passing up free money it's part of the PayPal and the venmo family so you know it's trustworthy and it is completely free you can join honey right now at join honey calm slash Charles and by doing so you're supporting the channel I very very much appreciate it let's join honey dot-com / Charles and thank you so much to honey for sponsoring today's video now for me personally I'd say the biggest thing that I have really learned or the type of thinking shift that Jacobs music has really helped me with is in the simplest terms harmonic freedom now what I mean by that is when you're growing up in you're learning music especially when you're learning jazz there are certain things that you kind of get accustomed to and over time they can become very difficult to break out of for example I can play a chord progression and you can probably think of 8,000 different songs that you've heard it in [Music] very familiar very widely utilized than so many different things and when you're spending so much time learning these types of basic harmonic structures that are widely used in jazz it can be very very very easy to feel locked into them a lot of standards and a lot of the Great American Songbook didn't really deviate that much from a lot of the standard chord progressions that jazz musicians tend to know the best and it's not that there's necessarily a problem with that because they sound really really great and they offer a really awesome platform to improvise on which is as we know one of the big components of playing jazz but for me personally as a writer I've often felt constrained by the things that I know and with a desire to avoid playing things that sound bad it can be very easy to stick to what you know works the biggest thing I took away from Jacob with learning a lot about his approach and learning a lot about how he kind of thinks about music is it really made me more comfortable removing that boundary in my head and being willing to try things that I would not have normally tried like be willing to move from B flat to a in some way and and and just be open to that sound how what can that sound like how can that sound interesting where can we go from there so for example I might be much more willing to try something that doesn't follow any preconceived chord progression or structure that I'm familiar with so I don't know maybe something like [Music] and just being open to hearing things that I never have either played before or never have really thought of as being correct now aside from harmony one of the biggest things that I've always noticed about Jacob that I think is a draw for a lot of musicians is his feel is all the boys in town now we've talked about this in all of the pop videos that we've broken down and talked about what makes them good or maybe what's not as good and feel is always a big component that I look for in music and feel comes from two places primarily one is of course instrument proficiency while I feel pretty confident in my ability to play the piano with a good feel me attempting to play the drums an instrument which I am not at all adequately proficient I can come close to getting the timing down and playing in tempo but my feel it's just not going to be anywhere in the ballpark of somebody who's proficient at the instrument like for example Carter McLean [Music] so proficiency on an instrument is of course a huge component to developing a really good feel which Jakob undoubtedly has but the other part of developing feel which in my opinion is far more important is an understanding of what the music you're trying to create should sound like in short you have to listen to the music that you want to play you can read a piece of paper in another language and maybe try to pronounce some of the words but you will never be able to truly understand the accent how people actually communicate the inflections without first hearing the language and depth it's the same reason why children learn to speak first and foremost from listening to their parents into the environment around them it's oftentimes why jazz musicians can be very critical of people who are not jazz musicians trying to play jazz they may understand what the feel is typically supposed to be on a surface level but unless you've spent thousands and thousands of hours consuming that feel it's very difficult to get it right so with Jacobs music you get a really good combination of both where clearly he's proficient at the instrument but it's obvious that he has consumed music jazz and well beyond jazz a lot and with the intention of learning and understanding the field for those of you who have been hearing time and time again about this dude Jacob Collier Jacob Collier I keep hearing this name all over the place what is this about what's going on here basically it can be summed up like this dude is really insanely good at music and uses that ability to make really insanely good music that a lot of people like at the same time it's a type of music that is coming from a place that is so highly educated and so thoughtful that musicians like myself are really drawn to it perhaps more so than other things out there now don't like I said that's just a little bit about sort of my experience and kind of what I feel like I've learned from Jacob and maybe a little bit of insight as to why so many musicians today are on board with it so Jacob Congrats on all the success the music's dope keep doing it and we're all looking forward to seeing what comes next [Music]

Channel: Charles Cornell

Views: 1,295,239

Rating: 4.9407029 out of 5

Keywords: Charles, Charles Cornell, Charles Cornell Studios, Studios, Cornell, Piano, Piano Covers, Piano guy, jacob, collier, jacob collier, jazz, jazz piano, jazz lesson, jazz tutorial, piano lesson, piano tutorial, jacob collier jazz, a cappella, a capella, acappella, acapella

Id: 1Popdt3NYgU

Length: 16min 40sec (1000 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 01 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/vinmctavish]

Nice, but man he talks a lot!

[u/mrkeys23]

Yes, this video is mediocre. He has a fair/middling understanding of Jacob's concepts. He's especially off base as to where Jacob finds his harmonic innovations. In opposition to these assertions, Jacob, though he did study jazz, steers clear of the upper extensions concepts that make up mainstream jazz harmony. Jacob even gets sarcastic about how overused those sounds are.

[u/Rafaeru_]

I can confirm Jacob has seen this!