Jacob Collier: It's Proper Special

Your arrangement of "Don't You Worry 'Bout A Thing" – it's a very well-produced video, both sound and picture-wise. In the description, you say it was recorded with a single Shure SM58, but obviously there's a lot more going on than just that single mic. Can you tell me about the gear and software you had in place when you created that video?

Absolutely. I spent my teenage years learning how to layer tracks on top of other tracks and create these mosaics of both audio and video. At that time, I hadn't really created a video that involved multiple instruments at one time. I'd done some of just faces, but the challenge that I wanted to crack was, “How do I create this kind of opus to all the things that I understand, in terms of technology?” All the audio was indeed this SM58 – it's a very beloved microphone to me. And all the video was done on my sister's iPad 2, which was a rather rudimentary iPad, but it was perfectly capable of doing what I needed it to do. I used the selfie camera to do the faces, which was up in the loft where I have a row of white cupboards. If I put my head between two cupboards, the crack between two cupboard doors was not perceptible. It felt like I was in a studio, but I was actually next to a cupboard. I edited all of the video together using, at that time, Final Cut Express, which was a copy of the software that I'd received from school. It was given to me by a teacher who was aware of the fact that I wanted to learn video editing but didn't have any tools to do so. I had iMovie, which I was using before that, but iMovie was tricky when it came to multiple faces. I had to render the entire video out, then put it back in, then put the video in place, and render out. Each element would be locked in as I went, which was quite a difficult process. What I found myself leaning towards was this Final Cut Express. To render a four-minute video took the whole night, so I would leave my laptop open on my desk. It would be churning away; I'd wake up and hope that everything was in the right position. Normally it wasn't, so I'd have to go in to recombine the elements. But that was all the gear that I used. Other than that, I used instruments from the room that you see here. This is the room that I grew up in as a child, and I've spent many, many hours, days, weeks, months, and years in here creating. From this double bass, to piano, to lots of voices, little bits of percussion – little trinkets which are all over the room. I combined them in all sorts of ways and created this kind of samba track. There were also some guitars as well. The challenge with something like that is: How do we create something that feels like we can experience it on many levels, which sometimes is what technology enables the best. You can just listen to it and enjoy it, or you zoom in and listen to the intricate details. Being able to look at the details – for me, it felt like a natural way of expanding the process. I edited all of the videos on a little MacBook Pro 2013, which was quite chunky but great. I still have the laptop. All of the audio was produced on a desktop Mac that lived in this corner of the room. That was using Logic 6, I believe. It was a rather old school, very greyed out version of Logic; before it became more similar to GarageBand, and the colors got darker, and all of the controls merged. That was essentially the system I used. The audio was recorded into a little TASCAM interface, which is the interface I used for the whole of my teens – a blue and silver TASCAM with two inputs. My speakers were Edirol speakers. I don't know the exact model, but they were those small brown ones that were very standard and great. I had a pair of headphones; I would plug those into the interface. That was it. I had one mic stand, a few musical instruments, one SM58, and my sister's iPad. Plus that MacBook 2013, Final Cut Express, and access to YouTube.

Speaking of Logic – I've seen the breakdown of your Logic sessions in your YouTube videos. You're working with hundreds of tracks, thousands of regions, and half your tracks aren't even labeled. As someone who studied architecture as well as music, I can see that there's a visual arrangement to what you're doing – a very strong visual tie to the music in how you're setting up your sessions. And it's clear that visualizations are also important in your performance. Tell me about what you see and how that relates to your music.

I think a lot about the universal axes of displaying or presenting ideas, and I suppose it started with how I listened and how I looked at the world. If you think about contour, for example, or line, shape, dimension, depth, width, height, thickness, thinness, strength, weakness, momentum, or lack thereof – all these – if you look at the world around you, there's so much of it that exists in all things. Music is a fascinating way to play with those forces, because they're actually less on the nose, in some ways, than they are when you see them or look at them – but equally pervasive and very powerful. I find myself being led to things visually that reflect some of those shapes and forms. But, for me, I've always thought about music first. I've never really thought of myself as a video maker or an "artist" of any kind; but I do think of myself as an organizer of elements. Organizing things – for example in a Logic session, in a way which is part extreme organization, and part complete chaos – sums up a lot of my imagination. There are parts of my understanding of, say, music – or time, chords, and melody – which are fundamentally based on a deep and detailed understanding of things. Then there's a part of it, perhaps more of the language part, which flows out. I don't know why, and I don't understand it. In collaborating with Ben Bloomberg, he has a similar sensibility when it comes to tech, in the sense that he understands the ins and outs of say, writing code, soldering, circuit boards, and hardware/software. But then, on the other side, he has an open space for the humanity of expression to come through and take that forward. I find myself being led to both sides – in a sound way and a tech way, but also in a visual way. On a stage that it's similar. Even now, I don't have any video screens anymore on stage, but I do have about 100 musical instruments that are all laid out in the exact positions that they need to be for the show to work in a theatrical, cinematic, and practical way. But within that, there's a ton of space for complete spontaneity and wacko improvisation. I like playing with those two ends of the spectrum.

In some of your videos, the screen is separated into a grid of tiles, and you're dividing up the screen into tiles that represent your harmonies. You have a very strong color palette in place where you're using teals, purples, and earthy yellows and greens. Is there an origin or story behind those color choices, and behind the tiling that you do?

That's a cool question. I've never been asked that one before. I don't think too hard about my color palette, but I do know what I like. There's something great about liking stuff. It takes no effort; it just takes being aware of it. But a lot of the colors I love most are actually in this room. The floor is wooden, the drums are of earthy colors. There are lots of browns and greens and blues. My Wurlitzer is blue. There are reds of instruments as well – there's a bass that's red, and my speakers. And I find myself being drawn to all of that. In fact, here, I keep in front of my desk this little blip thing.Picks up a 10×10 grid of squishy, colored balls.I do tend to be drawn to more earthy colors. I don't know why, but I do find a lot of solace and inspiration within the natural world; and taking a good walk is amongst one of the best things that I could possibly be doing with my time. I love the idea of reflecting the natural world. I think about this a lot, in terms of creating structures of time and harmony and music, because a lot of things in nature are beautifully constructed in a very logical and clear way. It's the same, I suppose, as what I aim to do musically, which is that you can experience the world of nature on the surface and think, “Well, all around me are simple things –a tree, a flower, a cloud in the sky.” But the truth is, there's so much – almost an infinite depth – to how those things are constructed, and the way in which they came to be. Experiencing them on these multiple levels – I love that process so much. And I love it through building things – as well as building and understandingsystemsof things. I like perspective-hopping between the largest and smallest of degrees away from something, in order to experience or understand it. That's not answering the question about colors directly, but when we look at the natural world in a visual sense, or in a sonic sense, or even in a system-based sense, there's so much beauty to be perceived there. I find myself either consciously or unconsciously – probably both – reflecting that in some way.

How did the technology that you developed with Ben Bloomberg inform all of that? Or, how did all of that inform the technology?

Well, it was, and consistently even now, very much a two-way process. Ben has these strong pillars in his mind about the idea that technology can enhance the humanity of a group of people, or a person and their ideas – and it can also stifle it. So, when it came to building the one-man show, which is the first performance system that we built together, it was focusing our energies on the parts of the performance that the human could do the most interestingly. And then it's the parts that the humanwoulddo if the human had more capacity or limbs – and building that around the human, so as to enhance that process rather than to provide a big structure where there are things that are always done in the same way, or an instrument that’s always presented with the same options.

Say, for example, the vocal harmonizer, which is an instrument that we developed together – it's essentially where I sing one note and play a series of notes, and we hear in real time, a resampling of that one note. We’re hearing all the notes that I'm playing, being sung by my voice, in real time. Within that instrument, which is an endlessly interesting instrument, there's a classic [Electro-Harmonix] Freeze pedal. So, if I put my foot on one of these three pedals I can sustain a chord, and to that chord, I can do certain things. For example, I can pitch-shift the freeze. So, if I go, “Wooraaa...singing modulated notes while air-playing a synthesizer,” there are different amounts I can pitch-shift. But I can also apply a lot of generative effects to the sound. They're hard to define and describe, which is helpful, because every time I use them, something slightly different will happen. The sound that has gone in is different, and the sound that comes out is different, and the options available to me don't just always do one thing. That is a very simple example of a system being designed to keep me on my toes and responsive, rather than locking me into a system where I know what to expect. As a musician, I very much feed off that process of being surprised, as much as that process of being locked-in and organized and understanding something. It goes back to what I was saying earlier about those two ends of the spectrum: Technology that encourages that process of hopping from one to the other – that, to me, is thrilling and inspiring. When I make music with those systems, or imagine music by way of those systems, I find myself coming up with much more interesting ideas than if I know the ins and outs of everything about what something is going to do.

You've said that musical harmony is about humanity, and it's about community. But, ironically, your music is often produced as a solo performance. Meanwhile, the technology is something that you're collaborating with; the technology is driving you to be a better musician because the technology is throwing you a couple of curveballs.

Yeah, I remember sitting down with my good friend, Herbie Hancock, one time – a few years ago – and he was explaining a keyboard that was built for his live rig. He was saying, "There's a button I press, and it gives me a random sound. I have no idea what sound's going to come out when I press the button. We'll be jamming, and then I press the button and out will come a tubular bells sound, crotales, an orchestral instrument, or some crazy kind of oscillating synth." He deliberately builds this into his live show, at the age of 82; a system where he is deliberately surprised by the results. I love that, and it was very much in line with the way Ben and I were thinking. You decide to always put yourself on theedgeof understanding, or creating something with the tools that you have around you. I love that process so much, and I do think that it keeps me human. I've got the kind of mind, as many people do who are musicians, and who work in tech, where I could settle and lock down my understanding in one certain way. But I feel almost unable to do so, because I think that what keeps me alive musically is that constant learning that goes on in real time within a creative process. I love that thing of being taken by surprise.

Tell me about the chrome red color of the Jacob Collier edition AONIC true wireless earphones that you launched with Shure.

That color is actually the same color as my monitor speakers and this bass as well. Again, I don't think too hard about such things, but I find myself drawn to reds.

Is that a custom color for those speakers?

Yes. These are the only Kii THREE monitors in the world which are this color. I love them so very much. I don't know if you've heard these monitors, Kii THREEs, but they're undefeated.

I was the first person in the U.S. to review them, so I had the first pair that was shipped to the U.S. on loan. Kii THREE monitors [Tape Op#120] are the best freestanding speakers I've ever heard.

Yeah, I completely agree. I'm so bowled over that the six drivers surrounding them – and all the low end without any sub. It's crazy, really.

You don't have to go all wild with acoustic treatment in your room, because the speakers have such a focused delivery. They don't react with the room in negative ways.

Yeah. It's proper special.

www.jacobcollier.com