There's a difference in singing out of tune and singing in microtones, even if it seems to be the same. The difference lays in the *context* : musical composition is like a canvas on which you paint a picture with your melody and chords. Sometimes you need a microtone to make the colours blur more naturally. But you can also shift by a microtone and end up _outside the canvas_ (that is, off the key you're currently in), making a "false note" which doesn't harmonize with the rest of the composition. So it's all about harmony. Some microtones harmonize well, others don't.
It's kind of the opposite... he's like " Hey, I know how to perfectly pitch my voice to every frequence, and I can perfectly control my desidered out of tune effect" :))
maybe he is technically amazing, but most of the stuff he does is forgetful and "soulless". ask anyone to hum any song of his, it just doesn't stick, it's too complex, thus it does not resonate with most of us. i listen to him alot, i am actually a fan, but i'm amazed by the complexity not the heart.
Had the pleasure of working with Jacob in Oslo over the weekend. The word "genius" doesnt even cover half of what this guy is about, and a nice guy too:)
It's interesting that in many many interviews, Jacob describes keys as having an intrinsic flatness/darkness/minor-ness or sharpness/brightness/major-ness based on their key signature. I completely accept that keys may sound bright or dark, relative to another key, and that plagal root motion sounds dark and authentic motion sounds bright, but I'm skeptical of this idea of intrinsic brightness and darkness - e.g. "F is a neutral key because it has just one flat". That's just an artefact of our notation system. But maybe there is something about his perfect pitch that allows him to perceive keys as having intrinsic character. Also I think it is strange how Jacob sort of loosely conflates the terms dark/minor/plagal/"negative" harmony and bright/major/authentic/"positive" harmony, like they are all equivalent glimpses of some fundamental quality, but he is rarely very precise in how he uses each term. There is something about the way he hears harmony that he is struggling to convey, and maybe those of us who don't have the gift will never be able to do more than loosely intellectualize it.
I agree with what you say about abstract notational artefacts; perhaps an explanation for Jacob's colour/shade analogy is that he sees C as an anchor. F, therefore, would understandably be a comparatively neutral key.
I'm pretty sure Jacob is a synesthete. :) I have synesthesia and I perceive numbers and letters in colors and they all have a different kind of a personality to me, which is totally weird, but (in it's different forms) also quite common among creative people. So it really is kind of inexplicable in any kind of a theory because it has to do with every synesthete's personal way of perceiving things.
modalmixture: I didn't read all replies to your post, but I agree with Roberta L who referred to him as a synesthete. Also, Jacob is young and exhibits all the attributes of a young genius, including a never ending well of exuberance for his area of knowledge. Unfortunately his youth might lead him to believe that he will be able to objectively explain the peculiarities of synesthesia, particularly how he perceives and uses his gift. When in fact almost all of the references he needs to establish to explain his process are out of the average person's experience. I hope he eventually finds a way to explain it in a way that is objective enough to make sense, his personality is so positive and giving that I would love to see him achieve that. If it doesn't happen soon though, I hope he has the humility and common sense to drop it and/or present it with lots of warnings! 😁
Addendum to my previous comment, probably just above this one: he's 23. That's not "young" compared to 16 (which he looks) but its young enough to not be world-weary if he was lucky enough to grow up in a stable environment with a supportive family - which he was. Anyway, I stand by my comment above and would love to read any additional comments if they're forthcoming. Gotta run.
I love how jacob arrived to the unison key after massive microtonal and play the final major chord on the piano and no one of you audiences clapped for this Masterpiece
The most interesting piece of information was uttered just as the video ended... "It's actually done using sort of intelligent, uh, just intonation techni[ques]".
jopjopjop Check out June Lee's latest interview with Jacob - at about 10 minutes, he describes a modulation from A432 to A440 where the equal tempered third in the former becomes the just third in the latter. I think that might be what he's getting at here.
Yeah, it's exactly how he does it in a way that sounds natural. He's tuning some notes to just ratios and then tuning the other notes to the justly tuned ones so that they end up in tune with themselves but out of tune with the 12 tone equal tempered notes. Still, even though the G 1/2# modulation has been talked a lot, no one has ever explicitly stated which notes are tuned to what and how it's accomplished in detail. I don't think June Lee's transcription specifies it either? Or maybe I just don't get how the accidentals work 😩
i sincerely think that the answer to the ‘hows & whys’ of Jacob’s very unique & personal PERCEPTION of notes & keys (as far as qualifying their flavors and shades: “dark, bright”, etc..) probably resides & is based on his quasi-instinctual relation to their fundamental/universal RESONANCE & frequency rather than pure coding value & technique, which may explain why he is struggling finding stable/solid terminology & says things like “F is neutral cuz it’s only got one flat” 😉☺️ but it’s all good even if we can only fathom that much about it 🙂👍
I don't really get the part where he describes that the key of for example F Major has a different feeling than E Major. I don't get it because these two keys are structured in the exact same way (which is wwhwwwh) and sure there is a natural difference between those keys if we are using just intonation as a tuning system, but when every halfstep is exactly 100 cents as it is in modern music where we use equal temperament, then we shouldn't hear a difference in color between two major keys. Is there something which I have missed or just don't seem to be able to wrap my head around?
He thinks a lot around the circle of fifhts and how that affects a keys brightness /darkness. I can't perceive it that way but certainly applicable in real music
@@benjaovalle1136 i think the way brightness works also depends on the pitch that he sings. From F major to E major, he is actually singing a major 7th up and not a semitone down, even though the two key, to our preferable way of thinking, only differs by a semitone. Then what he says about how flats make things darker and sharps make things brighter would make sense. I initially thought of it that way so it definitely sounds brighter to me.
Thank you for this amazing video. Is there a way to see the other videos or even better the entire master class? Thank you again. This is priceless material in very high quality.
Ideally the perfect fifth should be exactly in the middle of the octave. However in the equitempered scale it is played slightly lower than that. If the frequency of root note is 100Hz then the natural 3rd should be at 125, it's 126 on equitempered. Similarly 4th should be 133.333, 6th should be 166.66, 7th- 187.5, and 8th-200
Utrolig tøft! Så han på konserten i Trondheim. Hadde helt glemt at han skulle spille, men fikk kastet meg rundt å fikk billett da jeg så du poste på face at du hadde vært på konserten sørafor:-)
when you have more tones, more complications to play with so that you can hide the irregularity. It easy if you just practice it tho. Not really while singing but when making music. Progress can be made quite fast with dedications.
The thing is, for Jacob it both keys may sound different (hence he may treat them differently harmonically or melodicaly), but that's only to him (partly because perfect pitch). But in the equal temperament system every key sounds the same. Besides that, awesome.
what I found interesting is how he takes sharps and flats in keys literally. People arent taught to think that way but it's kind of a "duhhh" moment if you think about it. Makes music easier to navigate and probably the reason he was able to find that hyper Lydian technique.
Right. I hear G half flat all the time in the alto section when our choir modulates to the key of Ab. We’ve always called call it “not reaching your notes. Singing flat.”... but now here we are realizing that these flat altos were actually blessing us with advanced microtonal pitch setting. I must go apologize to them for not having an instrument capable of keeping up with them
5:00 I'd like to hear about those JI techniques. You can tell he's not saying what he wants to say because he knows the people there won't know what he's talking about. All these closed-minded 12TET dorks make me sick. Extended JI is a better basis for music theory.
