Jacob Collier Answers Music Theory Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED 

Yo wassup

Hi Jacob, love your music :)

Awwww

Legend!

Such a great guy 😁

best one ahahah

Underrated!

He had that one chance and he let it away

Remember Jacob, don't let these comments under your skin, before you begin...to make it better

Iol

5:49

The most music moment of all music

He’s not wrong tho. That’s probably all 12 notes on the piano

@BreakerBeat ur right.

Praising Devil through Jazz music

What's the song he's playing, do you/someone know?

@@jakobjakob7189 oh i could be wrong but i thought he was just improvising? i didn't realize it was an existing song

@@cinnomix ye might be. with the melody he sings i thought its maybe not made up on the spot...

@@jakobjakob7189 maybe he uses this example a lot, so he'd memorized it

Not too late for me. I’m just built different like that

Its never to late

Lol

@@kimotaum lol i like this comment

Hate when this happens.

That was the funniest thing I've ever seen. I laughed a lil too hard, im not gonna lie to you

lmao, I cracked up at that part 😆

My piano had 88 notes.

@@noelwalterso2 that doesn’t exist

I had to back the video up just so I could chuckle at that twice

Did you pick up the sax yet? You should, if you haven't yet. 🫂

What?? You know how to play sax but never do?

You definitely should if you can!

you should look up "Leo P", I think you'd dig it. perhaps will inspire you to wet your reed.

dude saxophone of all things lol wtf man if it was guitar i'd understand but SAXOPHOONEEEEE?

@Kevin P. Do you even know who he is? He is definitely a genius if you compare him to 99 percent of all musicians.

@@KevinP.-tb9kvdefinitely is a musical genius with zero exaggeration

​@@ccolson4072he's definitely a virgin 😂

He's a good teacher, his actual albums aren't very good at all compared to other artists

Proving that you deeply understands something and not explaining or simplifying in any way is not the sign of a good teacher. He’s a brilliant musician. Not a teacher.

Yeah cos it's a basic concept

jacob collier: *exists FBI: stay right where you are

@@StophDit’s really not that simple

the proof of being highly proficient at something is your ability to teach it to others in an easy way.

@@StophD Sorry Professor Music

W

Devil

Double U Dobel yu Devil you

😂😂😂😂

😂

Yess

When was this?

@@arnavyadav8486 late 1997, Malta

@@arnavyadav8486 10:43

@@anamerkury8881 no, SlashCamp was right.

I was gonna say that lol love him

"I only have two feet! What exactly do they think I am, giving me three pedals?"

“The left pedal is for my left leg, the right pedal is for my right leg, and the middle pedal...”

@@Ethan-ib5hk it's for your third leg 😏

@@Ethan-ib5hk but what if women is playing it😐😐

@@Arctic_silverstreak woman can have a third leg 😏

I don't doubt he's got perfect / absolute pitch but you're praising him for not being tone deaf lol.

I mean, I don't have absolute pitch and I can def tell the difference between both.

@@jaquelyncaiello4569 yeah, because he played them one after the other... If he didn't you would not be able to tell the difference unless you have perfect pitch.

@@Ben-zm2gm nah bro. When you know a song you recognise it’s key (even if you don’t know what the key is called), trust me. Like when learning relative pitch, it’s good to have a song you know they key for and the intervals it starts with because it’s an easy way to access a difficult skill.

​@@samguitarguy No you can't, except if you have perfect pitch (the literal definition of perfect pitch is that you can memorize specific pitches, and by extension recognise wether a key is A major and C major for exemple, maybe you had perfect pitch all your life without realizing it...).

Dude is 100% fluent in music, it has to be his native language. It's soooo interesting to see and hear him talk about music and explain stuff

THIS COMMENT IS AMAZING HAHAHAHAHA, MY GF CHEAT ON ME WITH SOMEONE THAT CAN DO THAT AND I WOULDN'T EVEN GET MAD

@@alfonruiz329 Could u prove that in a court of law?

I guess if you find a guy with that accent there's a huge chance they have riches In their family. There's about 5 schools in the UK that that guy could have possibly developed that accent

@@alexrtsimpson it’s just a formal, southern accent

Thank you

He's got prefect pitch

@@polanski2399 yep

Yeah, I mean he _leads the piano with his voice_ at 11:57

But it is still giberich what the circle of fifth actually are and how to use it...

@@bjornardahl I thought it was pretty clear.

Came here to say this very thing!

Wrong. The C note on the piano doesn't separate them, it only happens in notation.

Yet, really humble and just earnestly enjoys music. I used to be irked by how good he is, but then I see him in videos like this, geeking out over music or instruments just like I do, but with a gajillion times the knowledge.

@@zebanon5 it makes me inspired and motivated

AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAHAHAHAHAHAHAH i love this

Facts

1000th like

Probably the notes he's playing

@@thewarriorcat121 whoa really? 🤯

Maybe how Picasso sees the world............but in music form.

I'd imagine very little. This all sounds very complex, but he knows it well enough to explain clearly - so for him it's probably pretty subconscious, it'll all just flow out. What he consciously thinks about is probably more what he's trying to do with the song - Do I want it to be funky? Do I want it to be sad? What musical convention do I want to put a twist on, and how? Those sort of thoughts, because actualizing the concepts isn't very hard for him. Whereas a guy like myself is likely to have a fairly limited musical palette and thinking more like "what am I capable of playing that will sound like what I want?" or "how do I complete this idea?"

@@noesunyoutuber7680 just takes practice

u have been blessed

-

Z

,z

this guy is absolutely insane enjoy your rabbit hole

Ikr his enthusiasm is infectious

He have a certain chaotic feel to his delivery that is very inviting.

The word is passionate

My humble opinion: learn to play by ear first and theory second. Use basic things like learning basic major and minor chords, but don’t go too hard core on theory without your soul pulling you into it out of curiosity. Listen to music, record and listen to yourself and ENJOY it! Something difficult when learning music at an older age, especially if you tend to criticise yourself a lot, is to enjoy your own playing even when it isn’t great. It’s OK to like and be proud of your own sound even when it’s not perfect. Top priority mentality: enjoy it

Jacob "I can clap 21 against 22 like its nothing" Collier

Yeah not only having perfect pitch but also having the muscle memory in his vocal chords to hit each note perfectly and he doesn´t even focus on that. He is able to listen to himself sing and that´s the insane part O.o

@@RedCnMn hitting the right note shouldnt be a problem for any vocalist or musician, esspecially after having pich-reference

@@benniethejanitor7159 Believe me, it's harder than you think even after doing music for a long time.

Impressive for us normies but like Charles Cornell said: for the perfect pitch people it's like distinguishing colours for us. Here's the video for reference ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FWvOevUsy6M.html

In my head, thats's a really strong signal of empathy or(and) being a great teacher

@@99teteu1 yea, and the top music universities invite him to teach for them

One of th russian fives!

Counterclockwise is so much easier but whatever Sergei Rachmaninoff

probably also a good liar lol

Perfect pitch!

Trew

I mean- if you know your intervals and have a reference note it’s not very hard at all.

@@Jackmille20 it is because he went up and down in octaves

Its pretty hard trust me

Do it. Honestly it’s an incredible world. You won’t regret it!

This is why musicians love Collier; his music has a very similar quality for us, full of wonderful new ideas that just make you want to play along and see how you can learn and grow further (it's quite rewarding once you start to get the hang of it).

Plus he's a great teacher

Be careful with that mate, he is way too good, he makes me want to quit music

/keyboard

I think it's because the equal tempered scale is an approximation. So the relationships between the notes in C major are all slightly different than the relationships in E major, except the octave which remains a perfect octave.

I think he did play it slightly differently too, but I didn’t properly analyse it so I’m sorry if I’m wrong

@@KG-jd2hx Hmm - I think that would need careful testing. There are digital keyboards which let you select what key you want the tuning to be mathematically correct in. Having fooled around on such instruments in music stores, I suspect there would still be a perceived difference in "feeling", for most people, depending on key.

I couldn't remember the proper term for mathematically correct pitch in a given key, but I think it's "just intonation"

@@KG-jd2hx No, the whole point of equal temperament is that the relationships between notes in any key are the exact same.

That part blew my mind

Cringe

@@fern4031 L take

Haha I think he did get lost, there's a camera cut

I'm personally fine with the way things are, him doing his thing and me observing his creations at a distance. It's a good relationship. Maybe one day he comes across something I created and feels the same way.

@@kedonsiemen That's a beautiful way to say it ~

like basically every other friend.

@@SkyBooFast because it's best to be oneself.

I'd love to play with him, but I mainly play (and write) celtic music with a bit of country and bluegrass thrown in, which probably isn't his sort of thing, and my level of talent is nowhere near his, but...? (Writing music is really easy - producing it, not so much :P )

Why does this comment have 1.2 thousand likes and zero replies?

@@kartech6938 idk but it’s the funniest thing I have ever heard and I want to send a clip of that sentence to my theory professor so badly. 😆

😂😂😂😂😂

I loved it.

@@deeingalaplike name anyone more musically innovative than him i’ll wait

@@deeingalaplike cultists? lmao you’re so dramatic

@@deeingalaplike right instead you’re calling people cultists for simply liking a musician lmao

yooooo insane intherain!

This guy really kicked off my interest in jazz. Crazy what happens with more relatable music.

Hello mr. Cover

I’ll say hey to Jude next time I see em

My co-workers loved your Megalovania cover.

That was the hardest question for him to answer because he was trying to not make the one who asked seem like a dumbass, or too lazy to search it up.

I wish he said explosives

like when he explained kindly that flattening the third is how c major becomes c minor. Like just look it up! but he answered it well

It's only obvious because you play the piano or had it explained to you, there is no "middle C" on the other instruments. If you're going to be a teacher you're not getting away with answering "search it up".

@@1235tristan C4 ?

I've watched a lot of Bob Ross and I can say, in this video and others I've watched of Jacob, yes, indeed he has similar qualities.

I was gonna say 😂

I reckon Nigel Tufnel might have something to say about that too...

That's a spinal tap reference right?

@@gunwantiramchandani5431 Yep :)

C# Harmonic minor

I’d pay and spend hours!

Watch him explaining harmony to 5 levels

It’s because his mum is a music teacher. She taught my friend

yes yesss

It would be worth a fortune and I'd pay without regrets

He's got a fab RU-vid channel!

Oh please! Don't compare Jacob to a fake science idiot!

@@altair7001 Woah there I just meant by the way he engages you into these educational topics with such a passionate conveyance lol

@@snappy_. Ah OK, thanks for pointing that out. I sounded too harsh towards you.

@@altair7001 Lol no worries I know Bill Nye is an actor however he is actually well versed in mechanical engineering and has 6 college Doctorate degrees. He is also a regularly visiting professor at Cornell!

hahahah same thoughts I have an almost 9 months old baby.

Just tell him to hold the baby in 2/4 Lento

@@alvarocastillo2825 which type of baby? d inward or d outward one?

Galaxy brain

To name something by the series of tones it refers to? While it might be difficult for us to vocalize that name the same way as our natural language, it does make me think about what kind of alien language could theoretically do this.

@@RohanDX how about human? We call it the pentatonic scale because it is a scale of five (“penta”) notes (“tonic” or tone). Obviously the problem is that this definition alone doesn’t specify which particular notes of any key these should be, but we use the term “pentatonic scale” alongside hundreds and even thousands of years of historical context and musical precedence which inform us that when we say “the pentatonic scale” we are referring to a scale which uses the black keys of a keyboard (or any enharmonic equivalent). So, we take generalised language and use deeply learned, ancient historical and musical context to apply specificity to that language. Now, your point is still valid, because a language which can name a scale and with that name specify every note within that scale purely by the name alone (i.e. without applying contextual, learned understanding) does sound like quite an alien language. Scientific language sort of does this: the longest words we have tend to be the formal names for complex composite molecular structures. Imagine “carbon dioxide”, but instead of being a very simple structure of 1 carbon + 2 oxygen, it’s a much more complicated combination of molecules resulting in a proportionately more convoluted name. It’s proportionately more convoluted because as “stuff” is added to the molecular structure, the name grows longer to incorporate that “stuff”. In other words, the name reflects every part of what’s in it. That sounds a lot like the kind of alien language you were referring to - and I think the language of complex molecule structure nomenclature does sound quite alien to lots of us!

@@joshburns1777 So simplify, like an agglutinative language like German, Innuktitut, Finnish, etc.

true

Man explains harmony to 4 increasingly educated people and then sits in a room with Herbie Hancock while they both just fiddle around with keyboards and nod and periodically say “yeah”

Which one? This ones not quite there yet

@@whaddup5417 the famous one - 5 levels.

Jacob and Herbie just vibe together and ascend to heaven

Me too

Same, I think it's the difference between a passion and a job. I'm pretty sure I can talk longer about climbing (passion) than programming (job), just because one is just a mean to do what I really strive to do. Some people like this guy are able to make a living with their passion without losing the passion and this results in actual geniuses.

Me too, and m'y job had nothing to do with music.

@@alexcouret programming Is cool, sad to hear that you don't like it that much :(

PLEASE 🤚🏾

this could be a meme 😭😭😭

1 it is evil sounding 2 jazz sucks so its appropriate 😂

@@etopr4986 you dont hate jazz you merely fail to understand it, and you fear it’s lack of boundaries

@@etopr4986 shame on you

Wow you laugh very easily...

And yet, I think the single semitone interval is a much more ominous sound (Jaws theme creeps up in the background)

Or also minor second, that is way more dissonant than the tritone

Listen music of "I spoke to a devil in miami"

Minor major 2nd

Minor 9th

great fun fact!

wait, that's so cool, how did i never notice that?

same goes for the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint Saens which is just amazing!

Yeah that leitmotif was noticeable right away. What I didn’t know until a little after watching the show was that it wasn’t always the same tritone, since I don’t have perfect pitch.

did you actually understand what he said?... because i got even more confused

So does that mean you are constantly on fire or is it like king midas where every thing you touch spontaneously bursts into flames?

YOURE FAMOUS

You made it

@@Zoltan1251 yes im in band and I just use it to figure out key signature for scales and stuff??

But seriously tho!! Or Jacob Collier interviewing Bach😂

devil devil devil...

I can smell the wood burning already

He’s a wiiiiitch!!!

Sing us a song you're the devil man

Most musicians, however good they are, have a bag of tricks they tend to fall back on, Collier is no exception- he has his "thing", McCartney has his.

if he started playing something different the first time, people who never heard the song might think it sounds like that.

@@JawJX it makes me shudder to imagine somebody not having heard this song

Ohhh it's Hey Jude his accent made me think he said "Hey Dude"

@@BarnacleButtock that's normal, some people may have not heard Bohemian Rhapsody either , or not know what all star is, or know what's Gangnam style but it doesn't matter.

I think about this all the time

and that’s why i’m a communist

probably the majority, were probably all gifted at something but most of us don't get a chance to find out what

Most genius probably go underdeveloped cause life happens and you have to eat. Most success histories have as much luck and insane coincidences as they have talent in the mix.

Too many. Especially in a world with enough resources for everyone. Capitalism is killing us.

I've played the piano as long as I can remember and I'm still impressed 😆

You have no idea how confusing this video to non-musicians.

@@hasamahikaru Right? He explained the circle of fifth's more intuitively than an hour worth of lecturing...

I’m “musician” my whole life and even I learned stuff.

@@hasamahikaru showwww usss

"... so this is a circle" *pause*

Or bill Bailey.

Who is he what does he do?

@@benediktjostingmeier4519 Jacob or Bill? Jacob is a musician/componist. He has perfect pitch and is kind of famous for doing crazy harmonies. He's also won several grammys. A few videos to see to get an idea of who he is are "Musician Explains One Concept in 5 Levels of Difficulty ft. Jacob Collier & Herbie Hancock | WIRED" and his songs "Jacob Collier - All Night Long (Official Video)" and "Jacob Collier - Moon River". He's awesome

@@benediktjostingmeier4519 he is a musician like the other guy says,second thing you're pfp give PTSD

@@thelion2751 s a m e

I think I've found the sixth

He really is *obnoxiously* talented

@@Aname550 indeed, even adam says so

he mentions nothing of how a major chord consists of the 1st, 3rd, and 5th, tones in a scale. To make the minor you take the 3rd tone and flat it a half step. To keep it simple, C major is C, E, and G. C minor is C, Eb, and G.

He has perfect pitch

You should watch him divide a semitone and sing it. Pretty cool. Or modulate to g half sharp major

@@bigstam1234567890 you have the link?

at 5.15

I knew he was a genius but my jaw still dropped a bit.

Who better to explain the fundamentals with such deep appreciation and understanding?

Yes because everyone studies music. You must be soo smart

@@francovlla What he's saying is that when you have the chance to meet with a genius, it would be the perfect time to ask deeper, more complex, or philosophical questions about his craft. Nothing wrong with asking him questions that you could easily google an answer for, but it does seem like a little bit of a wasted opportunity.

So true !!! A music savant is mr collier

That would blow your mind, Ian. There are a ton of different theories about why a basic calculation like this is suddenly not so basic at all within the realm of quantum physics. Don't ask a quantum physicist what 2+2 is, you gonna regret it if you're not prepared :)

Satan: U wanna summon me dude?

Quite exciting, this computer magic!

I was gonna make the same comment dammit

*james hetfield has entered the chat

Anyone can see

🎶 _Nothing really matters_ 🎶

this is underrated

All classical musicians after reading this ......😂😂😂😂😂

@@irchriscott pretty much

Music theory does provides a foundation for the basics. At the very least, you do not want a musician playing like a drunk child.

@@dbclass4075 yeah i guess, but it isn't really taught heavily and you don't go into any of the complicated stuff

@@dbclass4075 Actually..... I would like to see a drunk child play a piano